Facebook Removes Suspicious Accounts For 'inauthentic behavior'
Facebook has removed thousands of accounts from Russian, Iran, Macedonia and Kosovo for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior," it said last week, announcing that it had removed 2,632 pages, groups and accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook said it would be “constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people.
“We’re taking down these Pages and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action”.
Most of the coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is how Facebook describes misinformation campaigns designed to widen political divides, came from the 513 accounts tied to Iran. These operated in multiple countries and pretended to be local people, media groups and political organisations. They posted stories on current events, mostly rewritten and repurposed sourced from Iranian state media and focused on political tensions.
Facebook previously took down accounts linked to Iran back in January 2019 and August 2018. The majority of the accounts, 1,907, were linked to Russia and posted spam, with some engaged in deceptive behavior. It removed 212 accounts tied to Macedonia and Kosovo.
Facebook didn't find links between the misinformation efforts in each nation, but they used similar tactics.
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