Kremlin Calls Facebook’s Removal of Troll Farm ‘Censorship’

The Kremlin has criticized Facebook for removing dozens of accounts run by a Russian internet troll farm, saying it amounts to “censorship.” On Tuesday, the company announced it had deleted 70 Facebook accounts, 138 Facebook pages, and 65 Instagram accounts run by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency—a site that operated to impersonate Americans to exacerbate political divisions ahead of the 2016 president election. Speaking Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov agreed with a questioner from one of the media outlets affected by the deletions—that it was a hostile step that smacked of censorship. “Yes it is,” Peskov told a conference call with reporters. “We are of course following this and we regret it.”