Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the prominent social networking service company Facebook, announced the removal of 653 pages, groups and accounts linked to Russia and, unfortunately, Iran held alleged for “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, which involved sharing of political material.
It’s been a year when this social media giant was meticulously regulating and recognized that Russian agents were successful in running political influence operations on Facebook, aiming for influencing 2016 presidential elections.
Last month, Facebook took action against 32 accounts that were suspected to be linked to Russia involving U.S. political activity for midterm elections to be held in November. Contrastingly, the most recent bunch of fake accounts were found determined to affect U.S. foreign policies and regional politics in the Middle East.
Stating that the review is yet to be concluded, Zuckerberg said, “There’s a lot we don’t know yet. You’re going to see people try to abuse the services in every way possible… including now nation states.” He defined these deception campaigns as “sophisticated and well-funded efforts that aren’t going to stop.”
A cybersecurity firm FireEye who alerted Facebook for the suspicious activities, “It does not appear to have been specifically designed to influence the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, as it extends well beyond U.S. audiences and U.S. politics.”
Renowned social networking service company Twitter, just after Facebook’s announcement, also disclosed about suspending 284 accounts for “coordinated manipulation”. Most of the accounts originated from Iran.
