Facebook Suspends Democrat Strategists Behind Election Disinformation Campaign

Facebook has suspended five accounts belong to Democrat strategists who were involved in a 2017 Alabama Senate election disinformation campaign against Republican candidate Roy Moore. The social media giant called the effort “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

According to the Washington Post, Facebook “suspended the account of Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of a top social media research firm, after reports that he and others engaged in an operation to spread disinformation during the special election in Alabama last year.”

In a statement, Facebook confirmed its suspension of “five accounts run by multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” one of which was reportedly Morgan, and claimed to have an “ongoing” investigation.

“We take a strong stand against people or organizations that create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are or what they’re doing,” proclaimed Facebook. “We’ve removed thousands of Pages, Groups and accounts for this kind of behavior, as well as accounts that were violating our policies on spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior during the Alabama special election last year.”

Last week, the New York Times revealed that Democrat activists, funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, imitated “Russian tactics” to push the 2017 Alabama Senate election in favor of the Democratic Party.

The disinformation tactics reportedly included the creation of fake conservative Facebook pages to divide Republicans, and a scheme to link Moore’s campaign to Russia.