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Facebook discovers Russian groups spreading misinformation about Ukraine

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Posted at 12:23 PM, Feb 28, 2022
and last updated 2022-02-28 16:51:51-05

Facebook says it has discovered Russian efforts to spread misinformation about Ukraine on its platform.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, reports Russian accounts were tiring to undermine trust in the Ukrainian government.

Meta says about 40 accounts, operated in Russia and Ukraine, pretended they were independent news outlets on Facebook and Instagram.

They posted misinformation about Ukraine being a failed state.

In a separate attempt, a Russian network was trying to hack and compromise accounts belonging to Ukrainian military officials and journalists.

Meta reports hackers were trying to post disinformation from these official accounts, including videos portraying Ukrainian troops as “weak.”

The Russian misinformation networks were also found to have accounts on YouTube, VK and Telagram.

Meta says it has removed the accounts and blocked the websites that the fake accounts were linked to.

It has also alerted users that were targeted by hackers.