Facebook pulls 652 fake accounts and pages meant to influence world politics
The fake accounts and pages were linked to Iran and Russia
Facebook has removed 652 fake accounts and pages with ties to Russia and Iran attempting to exert political influence in the US, UK, Middle East and Latin America.
The accounts and pages were divided between four separate campaigns, three of which originated in Iran, of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, disclosed by the social network today.
“Security is not something you ever fully solve,” said the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in a call with reporters on Tuesday. “We have to constantly keep improving to stay ahead.”
The first campaign involved a network of Facebook pages and accounts on other platforms under the banner “Liberty Front Press” that positioned themselves as independent but were discovered to have ties to Iranian state media. The 74 pages, 70 accounts and three groups on Facebook and 76 Instagram accounts – some dating back to 2013 – posted political content focused on the Middle East, UK, US and Latin America. The pages had about 155,000 followers in total. The same group spent more than US$6,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads paid for in US dollars, the last one running in August 2018.
The cybersecurity company FireEye, which first identified the campaign and flagged the campaign to Facebook, said the intent behind the activity appeared to be to “promote Iranian political interests, including anti-Saudi, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as promote support for specific US policies favourable to Iran, such as the US-Iran nuclear deal”. There was also significant anti-Trump messaging and the creation of sock puppet accounts masquerading as liberal Americans.
FireEye noted that the activity did not appear to have been specifically designed to influence the US midterm elections as the content extended beyond US audiences and politics.