Facebook suspends five accounts for ‘Russian tactics’ in Doug Jones’ election

Over a year after the conclusion of Alabama’s Senate special election, Facebook has suspended five accounts for allegedly utilizing “Russian tactics” to spread disinformation benefiting Doug Jones’ candidacy against Roy Moore.

This comes after the New York Times and Washington Post disclosed an internal report written by Democratic tech operatives detailing their “deceptive” efforts in Alabama.

Now, the Washington Post is reporting that one of those named in their initial reporting, Jonathon Morgan, has been suspended from Facebook, along with four others.

Facebook wrote in a statement that it had taken action against “five accounts run by multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” adding that its “investigation is ongoing.”

Morgan confirmed that his account was included in the group of five, but the identities of the other four have not been named.

“We take a strong stand against people or organizations that create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are or what they’re doing,” Facebook outlined. “We’ve removed thousands of Pages, Groups and accounts for this kind of behavior, as well as accounts that were violating our policies on spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior during the Alabama special election last year.”

Facebook appears to have taken no action on these specific “Russian tactics” used by the Democratic operatives before the media broke the story in recent days.

Secretary of State John Merrill told Yellowhammer News contributor Jeff Poor that Facebook “offered no support” to his office or the state during the 2017 Senate election, while Twitter was responsive to Merrill’s concerns during that cycle. Facebook’s delayed response came in spite of Merrill explaining that he told them what was occurring in the Jones/Moore contest “well more than a year ago.”

Morgan’s efforts have especially drawn ire because of his role at the firm New Knowledge, which helped Senate lawmakers uncover the means in which Russian agents weaponized Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to spread disinformation during the 2016 election and after President Trump took office. The revelations also sparked calls on Capitol Hill for the federal government to investigate Russian interference.

Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn