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Facebook announced on Wednesday that it closed a network of older fake accounts related to Roger Stone, a former political adviser to President Donald Trump and a convicted criminal, and his employees.
The social network removed 54 Facebook accounts, 50 pages, and four Instagram accounts linked to Stone and his staff for violating the rules to mislead others about their identity and purpose. The accounts were most active between 2015 and 2017 and some have already been deleted.
Facebook discovered the older accounts when it dealt with the Proud Boys, a far-right group of men, and their attempt to return to the social network after they were banned from the platform in 2018. Stone, who had been convicted of crimes before a seven-member federal court last year, including obstructing a 2016 congressional investigation into Russia’s election fraud, has ties to the Proud Boys. Search warrants related to the Congressional investigation included allegations that Stone had bought hundreds of fake Facebook accounts.
Stone denied the allegations in an interview with SiriusXM’s Jim Norton & Sam Roberts show on Thursday. “The accusation that I have owned hundreds of fake Facebook pages is categorically wrong. It’s just not true,” he said.
Facebook routinely pulls down fake account networks, but it’s unusual for the company to look at accounts that no longer publish content. The move raises questions about which fake accounts Facebook may have overlooked in the past, but it also shows that the company is considering how people could try to get back on the platform after booting from the social network.
“Their damage does not continue, but it is important and we want people to understand what happened and we also recognize that they can reactivate at some point, so we wanted to remove them so that they did not have this opportunity,” Nathaniel Gleicher, who monitors cybersecurity policy on Facebook, said in a press conference.
Stone’s personal accounts and “brand assets” will be abolished, Same said. His Instagram account has already been removed.
Some of the fake reports were issued as a Florida resident and published on local politics, Stone’s trial, 2016 US presidential nominees, and Stone’s Facebook pages, websites, books, and media appearances. Graphika, who analyzed Stone’s forged accounts, said the reports showed “particular hostility” to US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The same said that the network of older accounts is older than his time in the company and the policies of the social network against what is called “coordinated spurious behavior”. Around 2016, he said, Facebook focused on foreign interference in elections, and the older fake accounts that were also linked to Stone didn’t get much engagement.
Some of the fake Facebook pages came from Pakistan and Egypt. Around 260,000 accounts followed at least one of these fake sites. Around 61,500 people followed at least one of these Instagram accounts.
Facebook announced on Wednesday that three other networks of fake accounts were closed, including in Ukraine, Brazil, Canada and Ecuador.