REUTERS/Charles Platiau
Facebook has removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to Iran and Russia that it says were involved in coordinated campaigns to conceal their identities on its services, and in some cases to launch cyber attacks.
In a a blog post on Tuesday, Facebook said it detected "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on its 2-billion member flagship social network as well as on its Instagram photo-sharing service.
Facebook said the Russian and Iranian-based efforts were distinct, and that it has not found any links between them, but that they both used similar tactics that involved "creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing."
"We ban this kind of behavior because we want people to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook," the company said in the post.
The news is the latest example of social media services like Facebook being used as propaganda platforms to spread misinformation, following a growing scandal about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 US Presidential election. Facebook officials hosted a conference call with journalists on Tuesday afternoon shortly after the announcement.
Facebook's announcement involved purging its service of two distinct campaigns:
The removal of 652 Pages, groups and accounts that orginated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, UK and US.The remove of Pages, groups and accounts that can be linked to sources the US government has previously identified as Russian military intelligence services.This story is developing...