Facebook has removed a network of accounts with AI-generated faces linked to the Russian troll factory responsible for meddling in the 2016 election. The social media company released its monthly coordinated inauthentic behavior report on Tuesday which identified 83 Facebook accounts, 49 Instagram accounts, and 30 Facebook pages linked to “individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency” and posing as Sudanese entities. The network hyped support for Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian millionaire who leveraged his catering business and friendship with Russia’s president into a private military contracting empire.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Prigozhin on conspiracy charges in 2018 and alleged that his company, the Internet Research Agency, operated many of the fake social media personas involved in meddling in the 2016 election. In 2020, the Treasury Department sanctioned mining companies in Sudan linked to Prigozhin and accused his private military contracting firm, Wagner PMC, of operating in Sudan.
