By Donie O’Sullivan, Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz
CNN
July 8, 2020
(CNN)Facebook announced Wednesday it had shut down pages and accounts linked to Roger Stone and Proud Boys, a far-right group Facebook has banned under its hate policies. Stone’s own Instagram account was shut down as part of the takedown.
The network of more than 100 Facebook pages, accounts and Instagram accounts spent more than $300,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads to promote their posts. Some of the pages and accounts included false personas, an analysis commissioned by Facebook found.
The pages posted about the hacked materials released by Wikileaks ahead of the 2016 presidential election, politics in Florida, and Roger Stone himself, among other topics, Facebook said. The pages were also active around the time of Stone’s trial in 2019, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, in a press call Wednesday.