In a major crackdown on Monday, Facebook removed 103 pages, groups and accounts belonging to Pakistani military.
The Menlo Park-based company said that the pages were involved in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and found to be linked to employees of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) of the Pakistani military.
“We removed 103 Pages, Groups and accounts on both Facebook and Instagram for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of a network that originated in Pakistan,” Facebook said in a statement.
“The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts to operate military fan Pages; general Pakistani interest Pages; Kashmir community Pages. Our investigation found that it was linked to employees of the ISPR (Inter-Service Public Relations) of Pakistani military,” the social media giant said.
Facebook said that the ISPR-linked pages also frequently posted on topics like the Indian government, political leaders and military.
The company further said that those involved behind this activity “attempted to conceal their identities”.
According to Facebook there were 24 Pages, 57 Facebook accounts, 7 Groups and 15 Instagram accounts with about 2.8 million accounts following one or more of these pages.
Facebook also said that about 4,700 accounts were members of at least one of these groups and around 1,050 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
In its detailed report on the crackdown, Facebook said that a total of $1,100 was spent for ads on Facebook in US Dollars and Pakistani Rupee.
“The first ad ran in May 2015 and the most recent ad ran in December 2018,” the company said.
Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of Cybersecurity Policy, told Pakistani daily Dawn that the pages, groups and accounts represented themselves as independent but in fact “are part of a coordinated operation”.
Though he did not specify the number of individuals behind the pages, Gleicher said that the company is in touch with Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office and the “social media adviser”.
In the statement, Facebook made it clear that the accounts getting removed were due to their behaviour and not the content they posted.
Besides the Pakistani pages, Facebook also removed around 700 pages linked to Congress party, 15 pages linked to an IT company and 321 Indian pages for violating the company’s policy against spam.