AP
A Facebook logo at Station F in Paris. Ever since Russian agents and other opportunists abused its platform in an attempt to manipulate the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook has insisted, repeatedly, that it’s learned its lesson and is no longer a conduit for misinformation, voter suppression and election disruption.
People affiliated with the French military used fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics and also tangled with Russian fake networks in an online battle for political influence in several nations, the company announced Tuesday. It marked the first time that Facebook singled out people affiliated with a Western government or military for sanction, though company officials said they did not have evidence that the French military itself directed the activity.
Follow RT on On the latest hunt for ‘trolls’ in Africa and the Middle East, in addition to the usual ‘Russians’ Facebook for the first time banned a network of French accounts fighting for influence in former colonies.
On Tuesday, Facebook announced the ban on 84 Facebook accounts, 6 pages, 9 groups and 14 Instagram accounts, citing policy against
“coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Their activity originated in France and targeted mainly the Central African Republic and Mali, but also Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Chad – all former French colonies in Africa.
About 5,000 or so accounts followed the banned pages, along with 1,600 accounts in the banned groups and about 200 followers on Instagram, according to Facebook’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher and Global Threat Disruption Lead David Agranovich.
Print article In Philadelphia, public health officials think block captains may be more effective than football stars in persuading people to get coronavirus vaccines. Researchers in the Navajo Nation anticipate that directives about the shots will have to be reworded to resonate with Native people. And in Atlanta, where a federally funded project has been working with community leaders to increase minority participation in clinical trials, physicians have a lesson to learn in how to talk to patients about vaccines. Memo to docs? More empathy. Less authority. These messaging strategies are aimed at winning over vaccine fence-sitters in much the way political campaigns target would-be voters. But in the life-or-death battle against the coronavirus, as much as 70% of the population must roll up their sleeves in the next few months to achieve herd immunity and stop the virus’s spread. And, unlike well-oiled political machines, public health officials say they are having to q
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