Facebook removed a total of 265 accounts, pages, groups and events for coordinated inauthentic behavior, saying that they originated in Israel but focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, with some activity geared toward Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a Newsroom post that the people behind the network used fake accounts to run pages, spread content and artificially increase engagement.
They also misrepresented themselves as local citizens and local news organizations, publishing allegedly leaked information about politicians, along with political news on topics including elections, candidate views and criticism of political opponents.
Gleicher said Facebook’s investigation found that some of the activity was tied to Israeli commercial entity Archimedes Group, which has been banned from its platform and issued a cease-and-desist letter for repeated violations of the social network’s policies on misrepresentation and other offenses.
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