Facebook Bans Russian Disinformation Campaign That Claimed Vaccines Turn People into Chimpanzees

Facebook announced that it has taken a basal against disinformation connected its level by banning a Russian disinformation run that claimed that Covid-19 vaccines tin crook radical into chimpanzees. In summation to that, the run besides included different signifier that questioned the information of the Pfizer vaccine by sharing a falsified AstraZeneca document.

All successful all, the institution took down 65 Facebook accounts and 243 accounts from its girl company, Instagram, that were connected to the campaign.

“We removed 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts from Russia that we linked to Fazze, a subsidiary of a UK-registered selling firm, whose operations were chiefly conducted from Russia,” Facebook said successful its July 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report. “Fazze is present banned from our platform. This cognition targeted audiences chiefly successful India, Latin America and, to a overmuch lesser extent, the United States. We recovered this web aft reviewing nationalist reporting astir an off-platform information of this activity.”

Although the run originated connected Facebook and Instagram, it dispersed to different platforms, specified arsenic Medium, Reddit, and Change.org.

However, “vast bulk of this run fell level among the audiences it targeted, with astir each its Instagram posts receiving zero likes” and the Change.org petition failed to summation traction, with lone paid influencers’ posts receiving “limited attention.”