Facebook has removed a total of 443 pages and 125 Instagram accounts from Indonesia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt for engaging in ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher says there were ‘networks of accounts’ created to ‘mislead others about who they are and what they were doing’.
Facebook's global lead for threat disruption David Agranovich says the pages were difficult to distinguish as fake.
"This was a network of pages designed to appear like local media organisations and advocacy organisations," Mr Agranovich said.
The removed accounts typically posted content localised for a specific country or region, including Australia, often directing users to off-platform sites.
The crackdown was sparked by accounts posting ‘domestic-focused’ content about the unrest in Indonesia’s Papua and West Papua provinces, and United Arab Emirates pages posting anti-Iran and anti-Qatar content.