Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced on Wednesday that it took action against Facebook and Instagram accounts for links to Hamas.
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"We removed 141 Facebook accounts, 79 Pages, 13 Groups and 21 Instagram accounts from the Gaza Strip in Palestine that primarily targeted people in Palestine, and to a much lesser extent in Egypt and Israel," said the statement by Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of security policy at Meta.
"We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and linked it to Hamas," he said.
The relevant accounts, pages, and groups were being operated from the Gaza Strip and primarily targeted people in the Palestinian territories, and to a lesser extent in Egypt and Israel. The pages and groups were managed by fake accounts.
Meta describes the actions taken by the accounts as a "coordinated effort to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation." When such efforts are discovered, the company removes both inauthentic and authentic accounts, pages and groups directly involved in the activity.
According to Meta, some of the pages claimed to be operated by news entities and communities from the West Bank, Israel and the Sinai Peninsula, while others claimed to be independent news pages in the Palestinian territories.
The social media giant said that about 407,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages, around 2,000 people joined at least one of the groups and about 6,000 accounts followed at least one of the Instagram accounts.
About $21,000 was spent on Facebook and Instagram ads, primarily paid for in US dollars, according to its report.
"The networks used different behaviors, but all have one thing in common – each actively coordinated to target people and abuse our systems," wrote Meta in their Adversarial Threat Report on Wednesday.
"As we continue building our understanding of these emerging threats, we will keep sharing our findings with industry peers, independent researchers, law enforcement and policymakers - including on these new disruptions – so we can collectively improve our defenses. We welcome feedback from external experts as we refine our approaches."
The company also took action against networks in Poland, Belarus and China.
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