Facebook Removes 308 Russian Accounts Anti-vaccine Provocation

Illustration (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Facebook removed a network of accounts from Russia associated with marketing companies that wanted to push COVID-19 anti-vaccine content.

Quoted from Reuters on Wednesday, August 11, the deleted accounts were linked to Fazze, a UK marketing subsidiary called AdNow, which operates in Russia for violating Facebook's foreign interference policy.

According to Facebook, their campaign targets users in India, Latin America and a bit of the United States.

The accounts taken down totaled 65 on Facebook and 243 on Instagram (308 accounts in total), which were associated with Fazze. According to Facebook, out of 24,000 users, at least one or more of these accounts follow.

The results of Facebook's investigation showed that the campaign consisted of articles and petitions distributed on Reddit, Medium and Change.org forums. The content was then amplified through fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

These anti-vaccine campaigns involved paid influencers, however, mostly failed.

Their way of working, according to Facebook, is to create fake accounts from 2020 coming from Bangladesh and Pakistan, however, claiming to be from India.

They posted memes and commented, in November and December 2020, that AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine could turn humans into chimpanzees. They took pictures from the movie Planet of the Apes.

Facebook also found influence on health on Instagram using hashtags from the campaign.

Then, in May 2021, after five months of inactivity, they questioned the safety of Pfizer's vaccine with documents leaked from AstraZeneca. The Facebook investigation team found that the operations of the accounts coincided with discussions by governments in a number of countries to issue emergency permits to use vaccines.

Based on reports from various media, Fazze contacted influencers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok in several countries to upload the anti-vaccine content. However, influences from France and Germany dismantled this action.

According to Facebook, the results of their investigation are still revealing who is in charge of Fazze.