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Facebook Removes Iranian-Linked Accounts, Citing ‘Inauthentic Behavior’
 [Jpost] Facebook announced on Tuesday that it removed 51 accounts, 36 pages, seven groups and three Instagram accounts linked to Iran for "coordinated inauthentic behavior." The social-media company cited the cybersecurity company FireEye, issuing a report on "inauthentic social-media accounts posing as everyday Americans that were used to promote content from inauthentic news sites." In February, Facebook 783 deleted "inauthentic" pages, groups and accounts tied to Iran designed to manipulate users in more than 20 countries, including Israel.
Facebook began looking into this issue following a tip from the cybersecurity firm FireEye; this resulted in the removal of 51 bogus accounts, 36 pages which were followed by a total of 21,000 users, seven groups with 1,900 users in total, and three Instagram accounts with a combined follower account of 2,600 people. Twitter removed 2,800 accounts. FireEye wrote in a blog post: "In addition to utilizing fake American personas that espoused both progressive and conservative political stances, some accounts impersonated real American individuals, including a handful of Republican political candidates that ran for House of Representatives seats in 2018." The candidates impersonated included Marla Livengood who was beaten in the 9th district of California by Rep. Jerry McNerny (D-CA) and Jinea Butler who lost the race for New York’s 13th district to Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) The report also claims that the accounts fooled U.S. and Israeli publications into publishing fake letters to the editor and blogs. FireEye stated: “Personas in this network have also had material published in U.S. and Israeli media outlets, attempted to lobby journalists to cover specific topics, and appear to have orchestrated audio and video interviews with U.S. and UK-based individuals on political issues.” Posted by: trailing wife 2019-05-30 |
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