FBI resumes flagging foreign disinformation to social media giants
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In at least two instances in recent weeks, the companies have taken action to remove malign content.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
NEW YORK - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other agencies quietly resumed coordinating with the major social media companies earlier in 2024 to fight what government officials warned was a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations leading up to the US presidential election in November.
In at least two instances in recent weeks, the companies have taken action to remove malign content, according to the Biden administration and company officials.
Contacts between FBI investigators and the companies – including Facebook, X and YouTube – ground to a halt in 2023 as a legal challenge that accused the Biden administration of censorship wound its way to the US Supreme Court.
In June, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge, one of the first to wrestle with how far the government could go to combat misinformation and disinformation online. It left unanswered what limits, if any, the First Amendment, which covers freedom of speech and freedom of the press, could impose on the government’s ability to communicate with the technology companies.
The communication between government agencies and the platforms has resumed as Russia and Iran have stepped up efforts to interfere in the US presidential election. Intelligence gathered and shared by the government has previously flagged covert influence campaigns before they could take off on social media.
The FBI’s communications with the platforms resumed behind the scenes in February, according to the officials and a report by the Department of Justice in July, and they have already thwarted two campaigns spreading information from Russia’s propaganda apparatus.
In July, X voluntarily closed 968 accounts that the Department of Justice linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service and RT, the state television network. On Aug 15, Meta disclosed that a tip from the FBI had led to the removal of a broad web of inauthentic pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram disparaging Ukraine, Poland and the European Union.
In February, the Department of Justice rewrote its standard operating procedures to clarify when its officials could communicate with social media companies, according to the department’s official response to an inspector general report.
The new procedures emphasise that the bureau’s agents cannot exert any pressure on the platforms, leaving it to the companies to decide what to do with information. NYTIMES
