Factbox: Facebook takedowns of ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ in 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Facebook (FB.O) stated on Thursday it had dismantled a community of pretend accounts and pages it stated had been run by folks linked to the federal government of Saudi Arabia, the corporate’s newest motion to fight “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on its platform.

Social media firms Facebook, Twitter (TWTR.N) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube are underneath intense strain to assist cease illicit political affect campaigns on-line forward of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Here is a listing of takedowns introduced by Facebook to this point this 12 months:

* Jan. 17 – 364 Facebook pages and accounts operated from Russia and focusing on the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European international locations.

* Jan. 31 – 783 Pages, teams and accounts engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran.” 234 accounts, pages and teams on Facebook and Instagram working as half of a home community in Indonesia.

* Feb. 13 – 168 Facebook accounts, 28 pages and eight Instagram accounts focusing on folks in Moldova. “Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review found that some of this activity was linked to employees of the Moldovan government.”

* March 7 – 137 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and teams working as half of a domestic-focused community in Britain. 31 Facebook pages, teams, and accounts which had been half of a community that operated in Romania.

* March 26 – 2,632 pages, teams and accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic conduct on Facebook and Instagram. The operations recognized had been linked to Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo.

* March 28 – 200 pages, teams and accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic conduct on Facebook and Instagram in the Philippines.

* April 1 – 1,126 pages, teams and accounts linked to folks and organizations in Pakistan and India. “The operations … engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior were two distinct sets of activity in India and one network in Pakistan.”

* May 6 – 97 Facebook accounts, pages and teams concerned in coordinated inauthentic conduct as half of a community emanating from Russia that centered on Ukraine.

* May 16 – 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, teams and occasions which originated in Israel. The community focused folks in Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, together with some exercise in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

* May 28 – 97 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and teams which originated in Iran. The accounts presupposed to be situated in the U.S. and Europe and impersonated legit information organizations in the Middle East.

* July 25 – Four unconnected operations that originated in Thailand, Russia, Ukraine and Honduras. “We didn’t discover any hyperlinks between the…