The recently released Facebook report on the "State of Influence Operations 2017-2020" showed that Russia and Iran are the nations with the most "fake news" on the social network.
The document took stock of what the California giant calls "a set of coordinated efforts to manipulate or corrupt public debate to achieve a strategic goal."
Not all are attributed to governments
The authors titled their work
Threat Report
.
They claim that in four years, Facebook has put an end to the activities of 150 networks of fake accounts set up to misinform.
Of these, 27 had been created in Russia and 23 in Iran.
Nine operations from Myanmar were foiled, as were nine others from the United States.
These “coordinated non-authentic behaviors” have been spotted by the platform in 50 different countries.
Facebook doesn't attribute them all to governments.
Intelligence operations?
Experts quoted by
NBC News
, however, indicated that several of the campaigns carried the intelligence service mark.
Common targets include American Facebook users whose authors want to influence opinion.
"These operations try to undermine confidence in institutions and distort public debate by exploiting the tools which have also made it possible to extend and diversify online citizen dialogue and to strengthen constructive critical exchanges," said the authors of the report.
They have also noted an awareness of the phenomenon in recent years among the general public.
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