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More Iran-linked accounts taken down by Facebook & Twitter

Analysis by PMOI/MEK

 

Feb. 1, 2019 – Fake accounts associated to the Iranian regime seeking to manipulate political thought across the globe are once again in the crosshairs of Facebook and Twitter, resulting in a new wave of takedowns by the two highly-used social-media websites.

Facebook announced the removal of 793 pages, groups and accounts linked to the Iranian regime. These mediums were all attempting to manipulate political debates discussing current events, including the Israel-Palestine conflict, the wars in Syria and Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. The accounts and page administrators usually claimed to be locals in at least 26 countries, including Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan and the U.S., according to Facebook. Interesting is how these mediums were constantly posting messages parroting Iranian state-run media content.

With some assistance provided by the security firm FireEye, these latest removals are built on activities found last year by Facebook and Twitter. Cooperation between these two social media industry giants has been key to succeeding in these operations, according to Facebook.

Back in September of 2018, Twitter announced the suspension of 770 accounts known to be based in Iran for violating its rules, regulations and policies. Ever since, the company has taken further action resulting in the suspension of an additional 2,617 malicious accounts. Twitter believes these accounts originated in Iran and posted a whopping 24,000 tweets regarding the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

In general, Twitter says the volume of election-related content is on the rise.

“In contrast to 2016, we identified much less platform manipulation from bad-faith actors located abroad,” Carlos Monje, Twitter’s head of public policy, wrote in a blog post. “That said, as part of our ongoing review we found limited operations that have the potential to be connected to sources within Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.”

Facebook says it shared campaign information, dating back to its launch in 2010, in collaboration between law enforcement officials in the U.S. and impacted countries. “Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review linked these accounts to Iran,” Facebook said in a blog post.

This content consisted of 262 pages, 356 accounts and 3 groups on Facebook, along with an additional 162 accounts on Instagram. Despite these groups spending less than $30,000 in Facebook advertising, around 2 million Facebook users followed at least one of their pages.

During a phone conversation with the media, Facebook officials said they became informed regarding the campaign’s extent through sharing information with Twitter. The latter company’s officials say they removed accounts linked potentially to Moscow and Caracas as a segment of its midterm elections evaluation.

 

 

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