Social-Media
Facebook bans troll accounts linked to the Turn Point USA conservative party
Facebook deleted a group of fake accounts linked to Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization caught organizing a "troll farm"-style social media campaign last month. The company's new study on orchestrated inauthentic activity reports that 200 Facebook profiles, 55 pages and 76 Instagram accounts connected to Turning Point and a marketing agency named Rally Forge, which is now excluded from Facebook, have been excluded.
Facebook says it launched its investigation after the Washington Post reported on "some aspects" of the campaign in September. Apparently, the operation began in 2018 during the US mid-term election, and then reappeared in June 2020 as the presidential election warmed up. As the Post described, it focused on leaving organized comments on Facebook — including those supporting President Donald Trump, condemning rival Joe Biden, challenging mail-in voting, and encouraging sport hunting in Kenya and Botswana.
Turn Point described its activity as a concerted sincere political activism undertaken by real people who passionately hold the values they identify online, not an anonymous troll farm in Russia. But Facebook defines the most recent accounts that it deleted as 'thinly veiled individuals' whose names were minor variations in the names of the people behind them, and it says their single activin
Turning Point USA kept a leading role in conservative politics during the 2020 election. Creator Charlie Kirk delivered his first speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention and was retweeted by Trump and other major Republican figures. Turn Point is also not the only conservative group recently censored for organized propaganda campaigns.
Activist Jacob Wohl was charged last week with running a multi-state vote suppression operation, following a ban on social media planning and an election interference initiative. Wohl and his wife were brought before the court today in the event of suspected violence.
