–Facebook says 103 Pakistan-origin accounts, groups and pages removed over ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’
–687 accounts blocked in India for violating social networking giant’s rules
Facebook on Monday blocked 103 accounts, including pages and groups, allegedly linked to employees of Pakistan Army media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), for indulging in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found that it was linked to employees of the ISPR (Inter-Service Public Relations) of the Pakistani military,” claimed Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher.
“Today’s action includes four separate takedowns — each distinct and unconnected,” the social media giant said on the removal of the accounts, adding that the “individuals behind this activity used fake accounts to operate military fan Pages; general Pakistani interest Pages; Kashmir community Pages; and hobby and news pages”.
The accounts in question “frequently posted about local and political news including topics like the Indian government, political leaders and military”.
Sample of the content posted by some of these pages:
DETAILS OF REMOVED ACCOUNTS:
Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 24 Pages, 57 Facebook accounts, 7 Groups and 15 Instagram accounts.
Followers: About 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 4,700 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and around 1,050 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
Advertising: Around $1,100 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in US dollars and Pakistani rupees. The first ad ran in May 2015 and the most recent ad ran in December 2018.
INDIAN ACCOUNTS BLOCKED:
The social networking giant also “removed two separate and unrelated networks of pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram in India”.
The first was allegedly linked to individuals associated with the INC [Indian National Congress] IT Cell, and the second was connected to individuals associated with an Indian IT firm, Silver Touch.
We removed 687 Facebook Pages and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior in India.
The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts, the majority of which had already been detected and suspended by our automated systems, and joined various groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement on their own pages.
