Russia-Ukraine War 

Russia-Ukraine War

Russia-Ukraine War

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A new report details how a covert influence operation linked to the Kremlin continued to place ads on Facebook despite U.S. and E.U. prohibitions on doing business with the organization.

By Steven Lee Myers and Adam Satariano

The authors have written extensively about Russia and the phenomena of foreign disinformation and propaganda on social media.

A Russian organization connected to the Kremlin’s covert influence campaigns posted more than 8,000 classified political ads on Facebook despite European and US restrictions prohibiting corporations from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track online disinformation.

The Russian organization Social Design Agency circumvented Facebook’s lax measures by serving classified ads worth an estimated $338,000 to European users over a 15-month period ending in October, although the platform itself even highlighted the threat, the companies said. three organizations. in a report released Friday.

The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaigns on Facebook raise “critical questions about the platform’s compliance” with American and European laws, the report said.

The report follows an announcement through Meta, Facebook’s parent company, that it will change its regulations on the content it allows on its social media platforms, adding the removal of fact-checks that flagged or removed posts. The tweaks will almost certainly accentuate Meta’s confrontation with European regulators over how it handles misinformation and other corrosive content.

The adjustments come with the lifting of automatic limitations on race- and gender-related content that may run afoul of the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms to limit illegal and destructive activities. online and the spread of misinformation. The 27-nation bloc announced last year that it had launched an investigation into Meta for poor tracking of misleading classified ads on Facebook and Instagram.

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the content policies last week, he appeared to allude to the company’s regulatory fight with the European Union, calling on President-elect Donald J. Trump to “push governments back. ” foreigners” who, according to him, were seeking to limit freedom of expression.

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