Facebook has taken down a network of fake accounts attempting to spread Russian disinformation in Ukraine. The company said it had removed about 40 accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram that were detected over the last 48 hours. The company has also worked to stop hacking attempts targeting Ukrainians military and government officials on recent days.

In a briefing Sunday night, Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich said the accounts in question hadn’t yet gained a large following when they were identified by the company’s security researchers. He said the accounts had about 4,000 followers and Facebook and about 500 on Instagram.

The fake personas, which were targeting people in Ukraine, were being used to prop up fake news websites that published claims aimed at “undermining the Ukrainian government and boosting the activities of Russian actors,” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy. “They would publish claims about the West betraying Ukraine and about Ukraine being a failed state,” Agranovich said. “They also claimed to be based in Kyiv, and posed as news editors, as a former aviation engineer, as the author of a scientific publication.”

The company said in a statement that its investigation into these accounts is ongoing but that it has linked the people behind the fake accounts to a previous takedown of fake accounts in 2020. Facebook security researchers at the time said the activity was traced to “individuals in Russia, the Donbass region in Ukraine and two media organizations in Crimea — NewsFront and SouthFront.”

Separately, Facebook researchers warned that a handful of Ukrainian journalists, military officials and other public figures have been targeted with hacking attempts in recent days. The activity, which Facebook is attributing to an entity known to security researchers as “Ghostwriter,” is also meant to spread disinformation. Facebook said Ghostwriter typically uses phishing attacks to take over email accounts and social media accounts in order to post disinformation while posing as public figures.

“We detected attempts to target people on Facebook, and post YouTube videos portraying Ukrainian troops as weak and surrendering to Russia, including a video claiming to show Ukrainian soldiers surrendering,” Agranovich said. Facebook isn’t speculating who is behind Ghostwriter but other researchers have linked the attacks to Belarus.

The takedowns come as Facebook has tried to contain Russia’s ability to wield disinformation on its platform. Facebook said last week that it was forming a security operations center to monitor the situation in Ukraine and help it respond quickly to threats and misinformation. The social network has also encouraged people in Ukraine to lock down their accounts, and Gleicher said Sunday that Facebook would also be enabling its “lock profile” tool in Russia as well.

At the same time, Russia has said it plans to restrict access to Facebook in the country after the company declined to remove fact checks from Russian state media outlets. Gleicher for now the company hasn’t seen signs that its services are being blocked successfully. “We do believe that we’re still accessible in the country,” he said. He also confirmed that Facebook is “fully blocking the ability of a number of Russian state media entities from broadcasting into Ukraine.”

When asked if Facebook was considering blocking Russian state media globally — following an EU ban on two prominent outlets — Gleicher didn’t rule out the possibility. “Given the situation and how quickly things are moving, we're continuing to evaluate a full range of options.”

At the behest of the country's government, Meta took its most significant action yet against Russian state media organizations amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. On Sunday, Nick Clegg, the company’s recently promoted president of global affairs, said Meta was restricting some Russian accounts within the war-torn nation.

“We have been in contact with the government of Ukraine, and at their request we have also restricted access to several accounts in Ukraine, including those belonging to some Russian state media organizations,” said Clegg. We’ve reached out to Meta to ask the company to clarify how it’s restricting those accounts.

Clegg noted Ukraine also asked Meta to limit Russia’s access to Facebook and Instagram. For the time being, the company denied that request, claiming people in the country have used its platforms to organize anti-war protests and access independent information. “We believe turning off our services would silence important expression at a crucial time,” he said.

This most recent move comes after Meta blocked Russian state media outlets from accessing its advertising platform or using other monetization features. Russia’s Roskomnadzor telecom regulator threatened to throttle and restrict access to Facebook after company officials declined to stop fact-checking state-backed media organizations on the platform. Clegg said on Sunday the company would continue to label and fact-check content from those outlets. He also confirmed, following reports from internet monitoring organization NetBlocks, that the Russian government had started restricting access to its social networks.

Facebook has blocked Russian state media outlets from using its advertising platform or using other monetization features in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The move comes after Russia regulator Roskomnadzor said it would restrict access to the social network after Facebook officials declined to stop fact checking Russian state-run media outlets on the platform. Now, Meta’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher says the company is stepping up its restrictions on Russian state media, which are now barred from running ads or using monetization features anywhere in the world. He added that the company continues to “to apply labels to additional Russian state media.”

It follows a similar move from Twitter, which announced on Friday that it was suspending all advertising in Ukraine and Russia in order to better highlight authoritative information and guard against misinformation. Facebook has also previously enabled a “lock profile” feature for people in Ukraine as an added security feature, and has formed a “Special Operations Center” to track how the invasion of Ukraine is unfolding on its platform.

Russia is partially restricting access to Facebook. Telecom regulator Roskomnadzor says the move is in response to parent company Meta restricting the official accounts of four Russian media outlets. It said Meta was violating Russian law by doing so.

Roskomnadzor asked Meta for an explanation and to remove the restrictions on Thursday. After the company "ignored" the demands, officials decided to restrict access to Facebook, a measure Roskomnadzor says is in accordance with the law. The watchdog claims to have recorded 23 cases of "such censorship of Russian media and Internet resources by Facebook" since October 2020 (per a Google Translate version of its announcement).

The extent of these restrictions on Facebook is not yet clear. Engadget has asked Meta for comment.

Reports suggest Russia tried to spread propaganda and misinformation for weeks in the lead up to its invasion of Ukraine. According to NBC News, experts expect the level of disinformation to increase significantly.

As the invasion began on Thursday, Facebook enabled its "lock profile" tool in Ukraine to help residents protect their accounts. Twitter's Safety team, meanwhile, shared some tips in Ukrainian on how to keep accounts secure.

Tumblr may have introduced ads to user blogs several years ago, but it's now happy to take them away for a price. The social media site has launched an ad-free option that removes the marketing from microblogs for $5 per month, or $40 per year. You'll have to set up the feature on your computer through your account settings, but the zero-ad experience will be available on mobile devices as well.

The offering comes less than a year after Tumblr gave bloggers the option to charge for access at prices ranging from $4 to $10 per month. At the time, Tumblr saw the addition as modernizing the site for a younger audience, particularly creators eager to get paid.

It's too soon to say how successful this will be. Tumblr is effectively asking customers to pay to remove ads that weren't necessarily there before. Tumblr's 2018 adult content ban didn't exactly help the site's popularity, either. However, this might be appealing if you're a fan of Twitter Blue and other subscriptions that let you remove at least some ads — you don't have to put up with a cluttered experience if you don't want to.

Facebook’s security team is taking new steps to protect the accounts of users in Ukraine. The company is enabling its “lock profile” tool for people in the country, and building up a “Special Operations Center” to "closely monitor" what's happening in Ukraine.

The “lock profile” tool is meant to give users “one-click” access to additional privacy and security features, said Meta’sHead of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher. “When their profile is locked, people who aren’t their friends can’t download or share their profile photo or see posts on their timeline,” Gleicher said.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has encouraged users in “unsafe” areas to lock their profiles. Most recently, Facebook enabled the “lock profile” tool for people in Afghanistan over the summer amid the US withdrawal from the country. And the company has noted that it can be especially helpful for journalists, activists and others who may be at a higher risk of being targeted.

The social network has also formed a dedicated team to keep an eye on what’s happening in Ukraine. “In response to the unfolding military conflict in Ukraine, we have established a Special Operations Center to respond in real time,” Gleicher said. “It is staffed by experts (including native speakers) so we can closely monitor the situation and act as fast as possible.”

Twitter has admitted that it mistakenly removed accounts sharing Russian military activity in the midst of the Ukraine invasion. As TechCrunch notes, the deleted accounts, which have since been reinstated, included an aggregator of user-generated posts from Ukraine and accounts owned by people doing open source intelligence investigation (OSINT) to debunk fake news and claims. 

While users first blamed mass reporting for the account deletions, Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth said it wasn't a factor at all. Instead, the removals were a result of errors made by human moderators who are proactively addressing manipulated media on the website. 

In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson explained to TechCrunch:

"We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error. We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts."

In addition to proactively monitoring manipulated media coming from the region, Twitter has also responded to the Ukraine crisis with tips on how to secure accounts. Ukraine's websites have been hit by cyberattacks over the past few weeks, and social media accounts, especially those sharing news and images from the country, might also be targeted. 

Twitter Safety has posted a series of tweets in Ukrainian with tips on how to protect accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication. It also included links to its support page for those whose accounts had been compromised and for those who got locked out. Twitter has linked users to instructions on how to disable location info and how to remove it from previous tweets, as well. Finally, it's advising users to deactivate their account if they feel that the safest option is to delete it completely.

Facebook may be failing to tag a large amount of climate misinformation posted on its site, a study released today indicates. Researchers from the Center for Counter Digital Hate analyzed 184 exceptionally popular stories from what it identified to be the top ten publishers of climate change denial content in the world (a list that includes Russian state media, The Daily Wire, Breitbart and others). It found that roughly half (50.5 percent) of the stories failed to trigger Facebook’s information labels designed to flag coverage on climate change. Stories from such heavily trafficked news outlets should be the easiest targets for fact-checkers, suggesting that much more climate misinformation is evading Facebook’s screening.

Last year Facebook (which has since rebranded as Meta) promised to flag climate change coverage in a number of countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK and the US. Such posts would be marked with an informational label that would direct users to the platform’s “Climate Science Information Center”, which contains information that debunks myths on the climate. The study’s authors began their research following Facebook’s May 2021 announcement that it would tackle climate change denial propaganda, and all articles included in the analysis were posted after that date.

Independent fact-checkers also flag climate change stories that are false, and Facebook adds a warning label and reduces distribution. "When they rate this content as false, we add a warning label and reduce its distribution so fewer people see it. During the time frame of this report, we hadn't completely rolled out our labeling program, which very likely impacted the results,” Facebook spokesperson Kevin McAllister told NPR.

Facebook has made multiple efforts to scrub misinformation posted on its platform over the past few years, for topics like the 2020 presidential election, the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. But as Engadget and other outlets have covered, a large amount of misinformation is still able to clear Facebook’s algorithms without proper labeling.

But nearly a year later, Facebook’s review system on climate change content is still missing the mark. I was able to post a number of different climate change stories on Facebook without hitting its algorithms, including articles entitled “Why the West Coast Heat Wave Has Nothing To Do With Climate Change” from The Federalist and “Alarmists: Global Warming Causes ‘Unprecedented Cold’ in Tajikistan”, published in Breitbart.

Facebook hasn’t been specific on what type of outlets or information is eligible for an info label. Engadget has reached out for comment, and will update when we hear back.

While there’s some evidence that suggests efforts by social media platforms to tag misinformation and hoaxes has worked to stop their spread, a large amount of misinformation still slips through the cracks. And unfortunately, additional research indicates that the absence of these warnings (the lack of a climate information label, for instance) increases the "perceived accuracy" of content.

LinkedIn is delving deeper into the podcast world. It's debuting a podcast network that features in-house shows from the LinkedIn News team as well as programs from industry figures.

The shows, unsurprisingly, are geared toward a professional audience. They focus on areas including understanding tech, managing mental health and explaining the hiring process. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, will co-host a podcast about personal entrepreneurship called The Start-Up of You that will premiere this spring.

The company says the LinkedIn Podcast Network is a pilot and builds on the success of Hello Monday, a podcast produced by LinkedIn News in which host Jessi Hempel delves into the evolving nature of work. The shows are ad-supported and the initial sponsor is Verizon, Engadget's former parent company.

The podcast network ties into LinkedIn's other products — such as newsletters, live events, videos and posts — with the idea that hosts and audiences will be able to keep conversations going outside of the shows. Listeners will be able to check out the podcasts on LinkedIn directly if they follow the hosts and subscribe to their newsletters. The shows will also be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast platforms.

If there was ever any doubt about just how much of a threat TikTok poses to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg recently cleared things up when he cited the competitor as the reason Facebook lost users for the first time ever. Now, the company is ready to push its TikTok clone into more parts of its social network as it tries to counter those declines.

The social network is officially launching “Facebook Reels,” the Facebook-centric version of the feature that first launched on Instagram last year. The company has already been experimenting with Reels in Feed and encouraging users to cross-post their videos across the services for some time. But with the latest launch, Reels will be available as a standalone feature on Facebook in more than 150 countries.

Facebook will also be pushing Reels into even more parts of its app. In addition to placing Reels at the top of users’ Feeds, the company will allow users to share Reels inside of Stories and enable users to turn Stories posts into Reels. Facebook Watch, which has typically focused on longer form video, will also host Reels content, as will Groups. And the company says it will start experimenting with recommending “suggested Reels” in some users' Feeds. In other words: Reels will be in just about every surface of Facebook where users typically view and share video.

The expansion will be a major test for the company, which has made competing with TikTok and luring more young adults to its platform a top priority. And Zuckerberg has made clear that he believes Reels is the best way to win over those users, many of whom are increasingly spending their time on TikTok rather than Facebook. During Meta’s earnings call earlier this month, Zuckerberg said the company was “in the middle of a transition on our own services towards short form video like Reels.”

Facebook

To further incentive Reels creators, Facebook is also making monetization features available to more people. Monetization features currently include banner ads and sticker ads, but the company plans to start testing Stars, which allow fans to buy “gifts” for creators. The moneymaking tools could help the company differentiate from TikTok, which has recently been criticized for low creator fund payouts.

On the other hand, Facebook could still have a tough time standing out from its main competitor. Instagram has already had to discourage users from simply reposting old TikTok content as Reels. Reels also offers dramatically fewer editing and creative tools relative to TikTok, though Facebook now says it’s working on additional features like the ability to save posts as drafts.