Thread by @jseldin

DEVELOPING: @Facebook @Twitter announce takedowns of accounts linked to #Russia's Internet Research Agency (#IRA) or to Russian state actors

.@Facebook says it removed "13 Facebook accounts and two Pages linked to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency"

Goal behind the #Russia-linked FB accounts was to "drive people to their off-platform site masquerading as an independent news outlet based primarily in #Romania" per @Facebook "posted about global news and current events ...including social and racial justice in the US & UK"

"This network was in the early stages of building its audience, primarily on the left of the political spectrum, and saw nearly no engagement on Facebook before we removed it" per @Facebook

Per @facebok, the 13 accounts & 2 pages had about 14,000 followers but the English language page just only just over 200 followers

Per @Twitter, the #Russia-linked accounts it took down "purported to be associated with a website called PeaceData, which publishes a range of content about global political issues"

Some of the content published on the PeaceData site was "created by real people who appear to have contributed to PeaceData as freelancers" per @TwitterSafety

"The Tweets from the Russian-linked accounts were low quality and spammy, and most Tweets from these accounts received few, if any, Likes or Retweets" per @TwitterSafety "The accounts achieved little impact on Twitter and were identified and removed quickly"

NEW: @FBI confirms it provided info to @Facebook to help take down the inauthentic #Russia accounts in order to "better protect against threats to the nation's security & our democratic processes"

"We consider strategic engagement w/US technology companies...to be critically important in combating malign foreign influence actors" per @FBI statement