美国国家公共电台 NPR 脸谱网和推特删除俄罗斯支持的账户 称其干预美国大选（在线收听）

With just weeks left until the election, more evidence is coming out about how Russia is againinterfering. Facebook has confirmed that it has removed accounts linked to Russian stateactors who were trying to spread false stories. Those stories were aimed at influencing theoutcome of the November vote. NPR's tech reporter Bobby Allyn is covering this and joins usnow. Good morning, Bobby.

BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey, Rachel.

MARTIN: So tell us more. What exactly did Facebook uncover?

ALLYN: So this all started with a tip from the FBI. Federal authorities reached out to Facebookand said, hey, we found this site, peacedata.net, and it says it's an international news site, butif you look very closely, it sure does look like a Russian propaganda tool. So Facebook lookedinto it and, indeed, discovered that it was linked to Russian operatives, and it was sharinghundreds of bogus news articles about everything from racial injustice to the Democraticcampaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I talked to Ben Nimmo of research firm Graphika. They collaborated with Facebook on lookinginto this website. And Nimmo told me that the Russian operatives who were running it wereposting articles on Facebook to groups liked by progressives.

BEN NIMMO: It was very much a strongly left-leaning constituency that they were aiming at. But in among there, there were indeed pieces which were saying, well, Biden and Harris, they'remuch too far to the right.

MARTIN: So they were trying to make progressives less likely to be supportive of the Biden-Harris ticket. How does that compare, Bobby, to what happened four years ago?

ALLYN: Researchers say, you know, this operation both echoes the 2016 playbook andintroduces some new elements. So four years ago, Russian troll farms pushed false stories tosuppress the progressive and minority vote to try to hurt Hillary Clinton. We're seeing thattactic again. It's a similar goal. What's new here is they duped Americans into helping themseem more credible. They posted writing gigs on hiring boards in the U.S. telling, you know, young and inexperienced journalists that, hey, if you want to make some extra money, youcould come write for peacedata.net.

Here's Nathaniel Gleicher. He heads cybersecurity policy at Facebook.

NATHANIEL GLEICHER: And they used that to reach out to unwitting freelancers toessentially trick them into writing for this fake organization and writing on topics that theRussian actors wanted them to write on.

ALLYN: The thing is, Rachel, it didn't quite work. Facebook and Twitter both caught this veryearly on, and these pages never really gathered the reach that the Russian operatives hadhoped. So the tech companies are saying, look — this is a success story.

MARTIN: Can they really bask in the success of this, though? I mean, there's all kinds of otherdisinformation on Facebook.

ALLYN: Yeah, that's right. I mean, it was identified and whacked before it reached millions ofpeople. That is a good thing, right? But we know that Facebook has trouble controlling itsplatform, frankly. Whether it's violent militia groups that go there to organize or QAnonconspiracy theories, there's loads of troubling and, frankly, sometimes dangerous content onthe platform. And sometimes that stuff, it slips through the cracks.

MARTIN: So they have been paying attention to this, though. They've talked a lot abouttheir efforts to better moderate the content on their platform. Is any of that working?

ALLYN: You know, it's a constant game of cat and mouse. In 2016, the Russian meddling wasso impactful because the Russian troll farms were able to build audiences over time, over many, many, many months. Facebook's Gleicher says Russians have some new tricks up their sleeve, but so too does Facebook.

GLEICHER: Russian actors trying harder and harder to hide who they are and being more andmore deceptive to conceal their operations.

ALLYN: Yeah, so Facebook only started this investigation after the FBI told them about it. Andbefore then, these pages were sharing on Facebook for three months, which in Facebook time isa very, very long time.

MARTIN: All right. NPR's Bobby Allyn. Thank you so much for your reporting on this. Weappreciate it.

ALLYN: Thanks, Rachel.