Facebook removes hundreds of fake accounts posing as Black Trump supporters
Facebook on Thursday removed several hundred accounts masquerading as Black supporters of President Trump and the QAnon conspiracy, saying they were actually being run by workers in a Romanian troll farm.
Troll farms use fake accounts in order to manipulate and interfere with internet discourse, and are often linked to foreign governments or businesses that want to focus attention on certain topics. The Romanian troll farm posted content on Facebook and Instagram under names like "We Love Our President" and "BlackPeopleVoteForTrump," NBC News reports.
Facebook said using fake accounts goes against company policy, and the removals were due to "behavior, not content." Facebook also took down hundreds of fake accounts linked to The Epoch Times, a pro-Trump conservative media outlet. This affected 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, and 44 groups, as well as 31 Instagram accounts, which combined had more than two million followers. Some of the accounts shared false information about COVID-19, Facebook said, as well as conspiracy theories about recent anti-racism protests.
These accounts were tied to the digital media outlet TruthMedia, and The Epoch Times and its parent company, Epoch Media Group, deny having any connection to the organization and fake accounts. In 2019, The Epoch Times was banned from advertising on Facebook after buying ads under different names so they didn't have to go through review; at the time, they were the largest buyer of pro-Trump ads on the platform, NBC News reports.
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