Facebook removed nearly 800 accounts that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior originating in Iran and operated in a number of other countries across the world.
According to the reports, Facebook identified 262 pages, 356 accounts, and three groups that were involved in the coordinated inauthentic behavior by Iran. There were also 162 Instagram accounts that were also identified. Facebook didn’t confirm that the the accounts were created by the Iranian government.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher wrote in his post: In this 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.
The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFR) analyzed the accounts that Facebook had identified. According to the reports of DFR, much of the content posted across these groups and pages spread pro-Iranian messages and engaged in amplifying already polarizing topics, like the Israel-Palestine conflict.
According to Facebook, about 2 million accounts followed at least one of the Iranian Facebook pages and around 1,600 others had joined the groups. More than 254,000 accounts followed the Instagram profiles. Less than $30,000 were spent on ads on both of the platforms and were paid in US dollars, UK pounds, euros, and Canadian dollars.
According to Gleicher, many of these new Iranian accounts were found after Twitter shared its own data on inauthentic behavior with Facebook.
