People linked to the French army behind troll accounts posing as Africans, according to Facebook

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The allegedly misleading tactics used, which include using Facebook to impersonate locals in target countries, reflect the Russian government’s disinformation campaigns.

Facebook staff told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday that the company could not say whether the operation was led by the French army itself; they only said it was run by “individuals associated” with the army.

According to Facebook, the operations targeted the “Central African Republic and Mali and, to a lesser extent, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Chad.”

Facebook deleted the accounts and also announced on Tuesday that it had deleted the accounts, which also pretended to be Africans, which were linked to the Russian troll group.

In some cases, Facebook said, fake French and Russian accounts even interacted with each other.

CNN previously reported that Russian agents active in Africa had links to the same group of Russian trolls who allegedly used social media to impersonate Americans in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Facebook said the alleged French accounts “were posted mainly in French and Arabic on current news and events, including France’s policies in French-speaking Africa, the security situation in several African countries, claims of possible Russian interference in the elections in the Central African Republic (CAR), supportive comments on the French army and criticism of Russia’s participation in CAR “.

Elections will be held at the CAR later this month.

An article in French said, “Russian imperialists are a gangrene in Mali! Watch out for the tsarist lobotomy!”

The alleged Russian accounts, in turn, criticized the French.

“Although in the past we have seen that influence operations were targeted at the same regions, this was the first time our team found two campaigns, from France and Russia, that were actively engaged between they, including making friends, commenting and criticizing the opposite side were false, “wrote the authors of the Facebook blog post, Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy, and David Agranovich, leader of the threat disruption world.

Facebook said it linked about 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages to the alleged operation linked to people linked to the French army. The pages had about 5,000 followers on Facebook, the company said.

Two separate networks of Russian pages, both allegedly linked to a Russian group of trolls, were also removed. These pages had about 6 million followers, Facebook said.

Now Facebook regularly announces the removal of fake account networks that can link to nation states and other foreign entities.

CNN contacted the French government for comment.

Despite assessments by the U.S. intelligence community and evidence from U.S. prosecutors, the Russian government has consistently denied that it has used social media for foreign interference in this way.

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