Social media giant Facebook, on Tuesday 28 May removed 51 accounts, 36 pages, seven groups and three Instagram accounts, which were found involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour, traced back to Iran.
In a blog post, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gliecher said that the people behind these pages and accounts misled people on who they are and what they do.
According to Gliecher, the individuals behind these pages represented themselves as journalists and tried to contact policy makers, academics, reporters, Iranian dissidents and other public figures. They also tried to contact authentic Instagram users, some of which actually fell into using content associated with this activity.
The pages and accounts generally posted in English or Arabic, with a focus on a specific country.
Following are some samples, as provided by Facebook:
Facebook found out about the coordinated behaviour after a tip from a Cybersecurity firm FishEye.
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