Facebook said it deleted 149 social pages, 43 groups and 280 accounts from the UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and Indonesia because of "coordinated and spurious activities". The network giant said in a statement released yesterday that it also deleted 121 accounts on the site of the platform Instagram.
Facebook, which owns the Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, said the deleted accounts "engaged in publishing content on topics such as the UAE's role in Yemen, the Iranian nuclear deal, criticism of Qatar, Turkey and Iran and the attack on the Muslim Brotherhood."
The company added that it discovered that the accounts linked to three campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, the first comes from the UAE, Egypt and Nigeria, the second comes from Indonesia, and the third comes from Egypt.
Fake accounts
These campaigns, unrelated to Facebook, have created a network of fake accounts that mislead users about account holders' identity and activity.
Facebook stressed that it is constantly working to monitor and stop such activity, because it does not want to turn its social networking platform into a way to mislead people.
The move comes in the context of a new direction for Facebook to take strict action against accounts that broadcast content that incites extremism and hatred, political propaganda for one or another country or publish false information.
Facebook has come under criticism from Western countries and civic organizations in recent years for being slow in developing tools to counter extremist content, exploiting Facebook's political propaganda platform, attacking the country or broadcasting false news.
Earlier this year, the social media giant removed accounts from Iraq, Ukraine, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand, Honduras and Israel, and Facebook announced in April 2018 that it had removed or marked warning signs of 1.9 million extremist content related to ISIS and Al Qaeda in the months to come. The first three of last year.