Meta takes down Russian troll farm

Meta says that it's continuing to crack down on bad actors across its social media sites. The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, reported Thursday that it had taken down a Russia-based troll farm from Instagram earlier this year that had been churning out phony posts about the war in Ukraine. 

Global threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo said the troll farm, referred to as "Cyber Front Z," based in St. Petersburg, was detected by Meta in mid-March and taken down by early April. Meta's Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report, released Thursday, also noted the group was linked to people who had been associated with the Internet Research Agency, one of the major entities involved in Russia's sprawling efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Since it was taken down, the troll farm has tried to come back, the report says, but Meta continues to detect those efforts and disable them. 

Nimmo said Cyber Front Z hired dozens of people off the street to make what appeared to look like authentic posts defending Russia and criticizing Ukraine.