TECH

 

Social networks eliminate thousands of accounts in Iran, Russia and Venezuela

The North American company led by Mark Zuckerberg excluded 783 pages, groups and accounts showing "false and coordinated Facebook and Instagram behavior" in Iran, according to Facebook's cyber security chief Nathaniel Gleicher.
"We removed those pages based on their behavior, not on published content. The people behind this activity coordinated themselves and used fake accounts," Gleicher said in a statement.
According to the expert, the accounts published content favorable to the Tehran regime and against the West and regional neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The pages, some of which have been active since 2010, have garnered nearly two million Facebook followers and more than 250,000 followers at Instagram, a company that is also owned by the Californian group.
In addition, these accounts invested nearly 25,000 euros in advertising on Facebook and Instagram and organized eight events among their followers.
In turn, the US company Twitter revealed on Thursday that it had eliminated thousands of fake accounts from Russia, Iran and Venezuela aimed at influencing US policy and in their own countries.
The social network identified two operations in Venezuela that involved about 2,000 accounts of irregular origin, almost 500 counterfeit Russian-controlled users and about 300 manipulated by Iran.
In September, Facebook and Twitter argued before the US Senate that companies had stepped up their efforts to identify and close fake accounts and increase transparency in advertising.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg had assumed responsibility for large-scale filtering of data for Cambridge Analytica in the context of the 2016 presidential election in the United States.

 

 

Lusa Agency