U.S. is the top foreign influence target -Facebook

The United States topped a list of the countries most frequently targeted by deceptive foreign influence operations using Facebook between 2017 and 2020, the social media company said in a new report released on Wednesday.

Freddie Joyner has more.

Facebook users in the U.S. are the number one target of malicious influence operations.

That’s according to a report released Wednesday by the social media giant as it tries to crack down on what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Think, fake accounts posting fake news to manipulate the public.

Facebook said the U.S. tops the list of nations most frequently targeted by foreign deceptive influence ops.

And the report said not all of the malign content comes from abroad: the U.S. ranks second for domestic influence campaigns.

Facebook began cracking down on these influence operations after 2016, when U.S. intelligence concluded that Russia used the site to push falsehoods aimed at undermining Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and help former President Donald Trump win the White House.

Moscow denies meddling in U.S. elections.

According to Facebook, Russia topped the list for sources of coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Iran came second.

The company also said that about half of the coordinated influence campaigns was the work of domestic – not foreign – networks targeting the U.S. Facebook said they were operated by conspiratorial or fringe political actors, PR or consulting firms and media websites.

The country most gripped by domestic influence campaigns is Myanmar, where Facebook posts by government-aligned accounts have been blamed for fueling widespread violence against a Muslim minority.

The report said that worldwide more than 150 coordinated inauthentic networks were identified and removed by Facebook since 2017