Meta announced that it had shut down a "troll farm" linked to Russian businessman, "Putinʼs chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin and his "Internet Research Agency".
Axios writes about it.
In its quarterly report, Meta said it discovered a "physical troll farm operating out of an office building in St. Petersburg," known as Cyber Front Z, a month after the start of Russiaʼs invasion of Ukraine. The farm targeted users across multiple platforms, including Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and Instagram.
During a press conference, Metaʼs head of global threat intelligence, Ben Nimmo, said that Cyber Front Z "operated a Telegram channel that encouraged people to leave pro-Russian comments on the social media posts of public figures, journalists, politicians, celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman ".
Cyber Front Z accounts were liquidated on Meta platforms in April. The company shut down 45 Facebook accounts and 1,037 Instagram accounts linked to the Russian "troll factory."
Meta described Cyber Front Zʼs operations as "clumsy and "largely ineffective".
- In May, the British Foreign Office said that Russia was using a "troll factory" to spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine on social media.
- Russia is using a "troll factory" better known as the "Internet Research Agency" to spread propaganda on social media. It inflicts "blows" on Western countries and in the zones of influence of Russia. There was a lot of talk about Russian trolls after the US presidential election in 2016. Then Donald Trump got into a scandal due to interference in the elections, and the US Ministry of Justice officially accused 13 employees of the "Agency", including its general director, Putinʼs "chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin, of interference.