Online trolls linked to French military, Russia compete for influence in Africa: Facebook
Rival French and Russian disinformation campaigns have tried to deceive and influence Internet users in the Central African Republic ahead of an election later this month, Facebook said on Tuesday.
Facebook said it was the first time it had seen foreign influence operations directly engage on its platforms, with fake accounts condemning each other as “fake news”.
The company said it had suspended three networks of a total of 500 accounts and sites for so-called “coordinated unauthentic behavior.” One network was linked to “individuals associated with the French military”, it said, while the other two had links to “individuals associated with previous activities of the Russian Internet Research Agency” and the Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin.
The French Ministry of Defense and the military commander did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives of Prigozhin, as U.S. prosecutors say, targeted the Internet Research Agency to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He denies the US allegations.
“You can not fight fire with fire. We have these two efforts from different sides of these issues with the same tactics and techniques, and they seem to be about the same,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy.
France and Russia are both keen to assert influence in Africa. Paris has ties with many French-speaking African countries, which they consider crucial to preventing the spread of extremism, and Moscow is the jockey for a position in a lucrative market.
Facebook said the two campaigns largely focused on the Central African Republic (CAR), which votes on December 27, but also targets users in 13 other African countries including Algeria, Cameroon, Libya and Sudan.
Ben Nimmo, head of investigations at social media analytics firm Graphika, said both campaigns used fake accounts to appear as locals and sometimes shared doctoral photos.
The French effort began in mid-2019 and pressured French French messages before targeting “Russian fake news” following Facebook’s shutdown of a Russian-linked disinformation campaign in Africa in October last year.
The subsequent Russian operation sought to promote Russian business and diplomatic interests, as well as President Faustin-Archange Touadera’s candidacy in the election, he said. Later, the Russian accounts tried to delete the French accounts that tried to delete them.
But none of the sites built a significant audience in CAR, he added. “They looked like two magic teams wrestling, with no one else really paying attention.”
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