Russian agents used Facebook during the 2016 presidential election to promote political protests, including an anti-immigrant rally in Idaho, according to a report on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Facebook, which earlier had acknowledged the Kremlin spent about $100,000 on ads promoting false information during the election, confirmed to the Daily Beast that the social-media platform “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.”
Much of the propaganda campaign has been deleted, but the Daily Beast said one promotion unearthed from a search engine cache shows the Russian operatives using a Facebook event tool to peddle an August rally in a Idaho town that was said to be welcoming to immigrants.
“Due to the town of Twin Falls, Idaho, becoming a center of refugee resettlement, which led to the huge upsurge of violence towards American citizens, it is crucial to draw society’s attention to this problem,” the event posting said.
” We must stop taking in Muslim refugees! We demand open and thorough investigation of all the cases regarding Muslim refugees! ,” it continued. “All government officials, who are covering up for these criminals, should be fired!”
The protest was “hosted” by SecuredBorders, a supposed anti-immigration community on Facebook that was outed as a Russian front in March and then eventually shut down, the Daily Beast report said.
The rally posting followed stories on conservative websites like Breitbart News, InfoWars and WorldNetDaily about how immigrants were taking over Twin Falls, describing it as an “Islamic surge.”
Although 48 people said they were “interested” in attending the protest, four claimed they showed up for the bogus rally, the report said, citing the event page.
The US intelligence community has concluded that the Kremlin at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the election.
Moscow has denied the charges.
Several congressional panels, as well as special counsel Robert Mueller, are probing Russian officials’ meddling in the election and whether Trump campaign colluded with them.
