Facebook is reconsidering whether Russian operatives exploited its platform to influence Britain’s so-called “Brexit” referendum on leaving the European Union, Simon Milner, the social network’s U.K. policy director, told a member of Parliament.
“You expressed a view that there may be other similar coordinated activity from Russia that we had not yet identified through our investigation and asked for us to continue our investigatory work,” Mr. Milner wrote in a letter Wednesday to Damian Collins, a British MP who chairs a parliamentary committee on digital companies.
“We have considered your request and can confirm that our investigatory team is now looking to see if we can identify other similar clusters engaged in coordinated activity around the Brexit referendum that was not identified previously,” Mr. Milner wrote.
Facebook said in November that it failed to find any evidence Russia “engaged in significant coordination” aimed at influencing the 2016 Brexit vote, but a report commissioned by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee released last week faulted it for focusing on accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg “troll farm” accused of meddling in the 2016 White House race as part of a state-sponsored influence campaign.
“In limiting their investigation to just the Internet Research Agency, Facebook missed that it is only one troll farm which ’has existed within a larger disinformation ecosystem in St. Petersburg,’ including Glavset, an alleged successor of the Internet Research Agency, and the Federal News Agency, a reported propaganda ’media farm,’ according to Russian investigative journalists,” the Senate report said.
“I welcome the fact that Facebook have now responded to the committee’s request, and will investigate whether the involvement of Russian agencies in the Brexit referendum campaign, may have come from sources other than those previously identified as having been actively connected with the U.S. Presidential election in 2016,” Mr. Collins reacted to Facebook’s letter Wednesday, The Telegraph reported. “It is right that companies like Facebook should initiate their own research into issues like this, where there is such clear public concern, and not just act in intelligence that has been passed to them. They are best placed to investigate activity on their platform.”
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Facebook will conduct “detailed analysis of historic data” expected to take several weeks to complete, Mr. Wilner wrote the lawmaker.
“This work requires detailed analysis of historic data by our security experts, who are also engaged in preventing live threats to our service. We are committed to making all reasonable efforts to establish whether or not there was coordinated activity similar to that which we found in the U.S. and will report back to you as soon as the work has been completed,” his letter said.
Facebook previously linked the Internet Research Agency to social media profiles and accounts that posted content seen by as many as 126 million Facebook users during the 2016 White House race.
“Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations — such as cyber activity — with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users or ’trolls,’” the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded in a January assessment concerning the alleged election meddling.
“The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close [President Vladimir] Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence,” the report said.
Russia has previously denied meddling in both the 2016 White House and Brexit votes. Brits ultimately voted by a margin of roughly 52-48 in favor of leaving the EU in 2019.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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