CALFORNA: More than 1,100 pages, groups and accounts on Facebook and Instagram have been taken down for “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and violating the social networking giant’s policies. These had originated in India and Pakistan.
In a blog post, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said 103 pages, groups and accounts originating in Pakistan were engaging in such behaviour.
These were found to be linked to employees of the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistani armed forces. They used fake accounts to operate military fan pages, general Pakistani interest pages, Kashmiri community pages, hobby, and news pages. They also frequently posted about local and political news, including topics such as the Indian government, political leaders and the military.
Facebook said it removed 687 Facebook pages and accounts linked to individuals associated with an IT (Information Technology) cell of the Indian National Congress (INC). The majority of these had been detected and suspended by Facebook’s automated systems, the blog post added.
These include 138 Facebook pages and 549 profiles and have hundreds of thousands of followers. They also posted advertisements worth about $39,000, which were paid for in Indian rupees. The first advertisement ran in August 2014 and the most recent one was posted in March 2019.
The social network also removed 15 pages, groups and accounts linked to individuals associated with an Indian IT firm, Silver Touch. The Ahmedabad- based firm has been reported to have built apps and designed websites for several government projects.
The IT firm was found to be operating one Facebook page, 12 Facebook accounts, one Facebook group and one Instagram profile.
The Silver Touch page had about 2.6 million followers, the group had about 15,000 followers and the Instagram profile had 30,000 followers. Around $70,000 was spent by the firm in ads on Facebook, paid for in Indian rupees. The first advertisement ran in June 2014 and the most recent one was posted in Feb 2019.
Other than these, Facebook also removed 321 Facebook pages and accounts in India that have broken its rules against spamming. These were not part of a single or coordinated operation. They were sets of accounts that behaved similarly and violated the company’s policies.
The analysis was carried out by Facebook’s in-house investigators as well as Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Gleicher told reporters on a call on Monday.