Facebook on Tuesday announced it has removed hundreds of accounts from its platform that it said was part of a Russian disinformation campaign about COVID-19 vaccines.
Investigators for Facebook said the disinformation accounts were traced to Fazze, a marketing firm operating from Russia. The tech company revealed that they found over 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts associated with the firm that was being used to spread misinformation about the vaccines.
Russian Disinformation Campaign
In November and December 2020, several accounts linked to the Fazze campaign claimed that the AstraZeneca vaccine was dangerous because it could turn people into chimpanzees. At the time, the Indian government was discussing the emergency use authorization of the AstraZeneca shot.
The account also posted the same misleading information on other sites, including Change.org, Medium and Reddit. The accounts, which paired the posts with misleading hashtags, also asked health and well-being influencers to join their campaign, according to CNET.
In May of this year, the Fazze campaign posted another round of misinformation campaigns. The posts claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech had a higher casualty rate than other shots.
The disinformation campaign largely targeted audiences in India, Latin America and the United States, according to a report published by Facebook.
In July, Fazze attempted to recruit influencers, including those on YouTube, to help them spread disinformation about the vaccines. Several French bloggers said they received emails from an alleged Fazze employee where they were offered pay in exchange for making videos that criticized vaccines made by Pfizer and BioNTech.
One blogger said he was offered around $2,500 for a single video, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
"Data the influencers were asked to share had actually been cobbled together from different sources and taken out of context," news outlet BBC noted.
That effort triggered French counterintelligence authorities to launch an investigation into the potential involvement of the Russian government in the misinformation campaign.
Dmitry Peskov, Russian's spokesman, had previously denied claims of Russian vaccine disinformation.
Denying the Allegations
"Russia is not misinforming anyone, Russia proudly talks about its successes and Russia shares its successes regarding the first-ever registered vaccine in the world," he said, as reported by The Washington Post.
Several social media platforms have begun suspending or removing accounts that promote misinformation about COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Twitter suspended the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, for seven days after she claimed that the vaccines were failing, noting that this was the reason why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would not give the shots full approval.
That tweet earned Greene her fourth "strike"," which means she can be permanently barred from the platform should she violate the policy again. She earned her third strike last month after she argued that novel coronavirus only poses a danger to people who were obese or over the age of 65. She also argued that this means vaccines should not be required, according to The New York Times.
However, the Delta variant has been on the rise across the U.S., accounting for more than 90% of all new cases in the country.
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