Facebook announced on Tuesday that it was removing dozens of accounts and pages that were run by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a troll farm that impersonated Americans on the social-media platform to exacerbate political divisions ahead of the 2016 election. Seventy Facebook accounts, 138 Facebook pages, and 65 Instagram accounts were removed, the company said, in addition to the ads that those pages ran. “The IRA has repeatedly used complex networks of inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate people who use Facebook, including before, during and after the 2016 US presidential elections,” said Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer.
