Facebook removes accounts from Russia, Iran for ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’

Facebook Inc. said on Tuesday that it had removed more accounts from Iran, Russia, Macedonia, and Kosovo, citing what it described as “coordinated inauthentic behaviour’’.

A total of 2,632 pages, groups, and accounts were removed from Facebook and Instagram for operations linked to the aforementioned countries, the social media platform said.

513 of those accounts were tied to Iran, while 1,907 were linked to Russia, Facebook said.

The accounts tied to Russia were largely removed for spam with a small portion of those engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour, according to the statement.

Facebook also said the pages and accounts were removed for their behaviour and not content.

The social media platform has recently been cracking down on such accounts in many countries after coming under fire since 2017 for its self-admitted sluggishness in developing tools to combat extremist content and propaganda operations.

The company had also removed certain accounts tied to Iran earlier in January. (Reuters/NAN)