Facebook pulls postings traced to Russia and Iran

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook has taken down more than 600 phony pages, groups and accounts that were part of two separate disinformation campaigns -- organized by Russia and Iran -- targeting people worldwide, the company announced Tuesday night.

The revelation is unusual for targeting people in many countries and for involving a nation-state actor other than Russia, which has been the main focus of reporting on disinformation operations targeting the United States. The discovery was made by cybersecurity firm FireEye, Facebook said.

"We've removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, UK and US," said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company's head of cybersecurity policy, in a blog post.

"Some of this activity originated in Iran, and some originated in Russia. These were distinct campaigns and we have not identified any link or coordination between them. However, they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing," the blog post said.

The campaign's scale exceeded that of another influence operation that Facebook revealed last month, in which the company said it detected and removed 32 pages and fake accounts that had engaged in activity around divisive social issues before the November midterm elections.

The revelations underscore how Facebook continues to be used as a weapon by others to try and influence the American electorate. After the 2016 presidential election, the company revealed that its site was used to spread divisive messages to voters on issues around race, gun control and the environment. The Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked group, was at the center of an indictment this year alleging interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The agency bought thousands of ads targeting Americans, often with rubles, and created posts that reached 126 million Americans, frequently with divisive messages.

While Facebook has vowed to clamp down on such misuse, the social network said last month that it had detected and removed 32 pages and fake accounts that reached 290,000 people with ads, events and regular posts on topics such as race, fascism and feminism.

Those accounts were mainly critical of President Donald Trump, which differed from 2016 when Russian disinformation messaging focused on bolstering his candidacy and undermining his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

One of those pages was joined by nearly 140,000 people, who believed that they were fighting racism in the United States, while another set up dozens of events targeting left-wing activists.

While Facebook did not definitively link last month's campaign to Russia, it said some of the tools and techniques used by the accounts were similar to those used by the Internet Research Agency.

Facebook, which has been criticized for its lack of action by lawmakers and advocates, has hired more content moderators and security experts to oversee the social network. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, is expected to testify on Facebook's progress alongside other companies in Congress on Sept. 5.

Information for this article was contributed by Sheera Frenkel and Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; by Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Tony Romm of The Washington Post; and by Sarah Frier of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 08/22/2018

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