Facebook revealed on Tuesday that it has removed about 650 pages, groups, and accounts it determined are part of a coordinated disinformation campaign out of Russia — and Iran. Also on Tuesday, Twitter said it had suspended 284 Iran-linked accounts.
Menlo Park, California-based Facebook said that it has scrapped 652 fake accounts and pages that targeted Facebook users in the United States, United Kingdom, Latin America, and the Middle East. Facebook said that it undertook four separate investigations into aspects of the suspicious activity, three of which were related to Iran, and the fourth to Russian military intelligence services. The Iranian and Russian campaigns were unrelated, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with reporters on Tuesday evening.
Zuckerberg said Facebook banned the fake accounts and announced the decision was “because authenticity matters, and people need to be able to trust the connections that they make on Facebook.”
This is the second time in less than a month that Facebook has identified and removed suspicious activity on its platform, and it comes amid concern that Russia and others are trying to disrupt the 2018 midterm elections. Facebook has stepped up enforcement as a result of those concerns, but it’s not clear whether any of the activity Facebook revealed Tuesday was specifically targeted at swaying the November contest in the US.
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