It’s no secret what Cambridge Analytica, now a defunct British political consulting firm, did with Facebook users personal data using the data mining and analysis techniques to influence the 2016 US presidential elections. The case is still being investigated in both UK and USA. The personal data of approximately 87 million Facebook users were acquired via the 270,000 Facebook users. Ahead of the US midterm 2018 elections, Facebook announced that it has blocked 115 accounts for suspected “coordinated inauthentic behavior” connected to foreign entities attempting to interfere with the elections. Facebook has blocked these accounts on Monday - 5th November. 30 of these accounts belong to Facebook and 85 of them are from the popular photo-sharing app Instagram. These accounts have been blocked after the warning given by the US law enforcement officials that these accounts could potentially be used to affect USA elections results.
The government authorities also warned that all these accounts could be linked to foreign entities as they appeared to be in French or Russian. Facebook deleted the accounts after being notified by the law enforcement authorities.
US government agencies said that foreign entities could spread fake news in the US elections to influence the election results. Even before this, the US accused Russia of spreading fake news and targeted propaganda from these accounts during elections. The US accused Russia of spreading Fake News in the 2016 presidential election, which was highly condemned by the world leaders and organisations.
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