LinkedIn co-founder says he unknowingly backed disinformation effort in Alabama Senate race

Billionaire Reid Hoffman has acknowledged that he partially funded a group that used disinformation tactics in Alabama’s 2017 special election in an effort to sink Republican candidate Roy Moore, according to The Washington Post. Last week, Facebook suspended five accounts linked to the operation for “engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior.” One of those accounts belonged to Jonathon Morgan, CEO of cybersecurity company New Knowledge. Morgan has said he was acting alone as a researcher and not through New Knowledge.

The group Hoffman backed financially, American Engagement Technologies, used Facebook in a manner similar to the way Russia inserted itself into the 2016 US presidential election. They created misleading Facebook pages, urged Republicans in Alabama to support a write-in candidate instead of Roy Moore, and “created false evidence that bots were backing Moore on Twitter” to spur misleading news headlines. The effort was collectively known as Project Birmingham.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/26/18156702/reid-hoffman-backed-group-alabama-election-misinformation-roy-moore