Facebook has removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, groups and events with “inauthentic behavior” linked to Israel which has been targeting users in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.
According to the Social Media giant, this removal was carried out as part of its policy on curbing privacy lapses and hate speech within the social media space.
In a statement released by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook “The people behind this network used fake accounts to run pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement,”.
He identified Israel‘s Archimedes Group as the source of some of the activity. “This organization and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter,” said Gleicher.
Gleicher said Archimedes had 65 Facebook accounts, 161 pages, 12 events and four Instagram accounts with some of the pages having a follower count of about 2.8 million .
He further said “The page administrators and account owners frequently posted about political news, including topics like elections in various countries, candidate views and criticism of political opponents.”
