Facebook suspends "unauthentic" Iranian accounts that criticized Trump and spread conflicting political messages

Facebook announced Friday that it has suspended 82 pages, groups and accounts of Iranian origin for engaging in "unauthorized coordinated behavior" and sharing conflicting political messages, including opposition to President Trump.

The accounts – some of which have also been removed from Facebook's photo-sharing site, Instagram – do not seem to have any clear "links to the Iranian government," said Facebook, but the company could not say for sure who was behind them. More than one million Facebook users have followed at least one of the pages removed by the company and tens of thousands of users have joined one of the user-created groups based in Iran.

One of the inauthentic accounts, called Wake Up America, shared images that criticized Trump, calling him the "most hated and hated president." In many cases, Iran-related accounts have come forward as US or British citizens, said Facebook.

The announcement – two weeks before the 2018 US elections – shows that malicious actors, potentially foreign governments, continue to use social media to promote their favorite political rhetoric and sow social unrest online.

Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said the company could not "evaluate the motives of these bad actors." But he described this example as an "intelligent and well-financed opponent who will never give up and change tactics steadily". "

Better technology and thousands of new employees have helped social media sites find and remove propaganda and other problematic content faster, as well as a flood of fake accounts. But experts say they face a scourge of misinformation that has become more global and sophisticated since they discovered that Russian agents were exacerbating tensions online in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Senator Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), The most Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, "The Russian gaming book is open, and more and more bad actors are going to take advantage of it. Social media companies will have to be more proactive and the Congress will have to intervene and put safeguards in place so that misinformation and misinformation can not flourish so easily on these platforms. "

Takedowns are Facebook's second action on Iran-related accounts. In August, the social media giant removed hundreds of profiles and pages on Facebook and Instagram. In this case, however, Facebook has more explicitly linked some of these accounts to the Iranian public media. These accounts had posted content, created events, and bought ads that sometimes passed favorable political messages to the Iranian government.

Other tech giants, including Twitter and YouTube, owned by Google, took action in August to remove accounts related to Iran. On Twitter, these Iran-related accounts have published more than a million tweets – and are often portrayed as foreign journalists and US citizens in order to amplify messages on regional political issues, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.