The social networking network Facebook has put an end to a new campaign launched by Iran against a large number of countries, including France, it said, showing it was the second in months.
The social network said it had scrapped 783 pages, a collection and an account that reproduced Iran´s official position on sensitive issues such as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria and Yemen in targeted countries, under cover of accounts or pages that presented themselves as local.
As with many campaigns posted by Facebook and Twitter, the messages on these pages are apparently fueling tensions in the community, according to some Western analysts.
Among the messages that were canceled and displayed on Facebook, a drawing bearing the comment "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine." Another example is "I do not recognize Israel at all", which was written on the page "Israel is a war criminal".
Some of the letters carry leaflets from Iranian state media. These messages shared by fictitious accounts are attributed to other sources or accompanied by sharp messages.
"We are not able to confirm who is behind this directly," said Natanil Gleicher, Facebook´s information security chief, in a telephone interview with journalists. "If they were Iranian authorities or other actors," he said, he prefers to be cautious.
He declined to talk about possible motives for that either.
Facebook has in the past closed accounts and pages suspected of coming from Iran. Glesher said the group then continued its investigations in recent months and worked closely with Twitter for short messages.
As with the closure of accounts and pages labeled "non-native" in the terms of Facebook, Glicher said that the cancellation of pages and accounts was not because of its content, but because those who put it used fake accounts and "coordinated" in order to mislead users.
The activities, which Facebook put an end to Thursday, were spotted in 26 countries, most of them Muslims, in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, as well as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa.
These accounts were published on Facebook and its branch of Instagram and some of them are back in 2010.
About 2 million accounts followed at least one of the pages concerned, about 1,600 accounts in one of the groups and more than 254,000 people tracking at least one of these accounts at Instagram.
Facebook had carefully organized its staff to abolish this kind of behavior on its platform after the sharp criticism it faced for not moving in the face of manipulation of the election that is believed to have done for Donald Trump in 2016.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the presidential election.
The Facebook and Twitter networks have announced the closure of many accounts after monitoring campaigns originating from Iran and Russia.
The Google network also closed "accounts linked to the Radio and Television Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRIB) was hiding relationship" this institution Facebook.
At the same time, Twitter published on Thursday the results of its investigations on the platform activity during the last legislative elections last November.
About 100 million tweets were written between March and Election Day.
Twitter said it had uncovered a "small number" of tweets no more than 6,000, a goal of deterring people.
"Unlike 2016, we have put on the podium a much smaller number of manipulations by bad-intentioned actors abroad," he said.
He pointed out that he monitored some "limited" operations coming from Iran, Venezuela and Russia, but disrupted most of the suspicious accounts on the day of the ballot.
