Facebook launched a massive crackdown today on hundreds of pages, groups and accounts originating both in India and Pakistan, for violating its policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior or spam.
In the clean-up effort, the social media giant removed 103 pages which originated in Pakistan and largely posted false information relating to Indian government, political leaders and military.
The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts to operate military fan Pages; general Pakistani interest Pages; Kashmir community Pages; and hobby and news Pages, Facebook said in a statement.
"They also frequently posted about local and political news including topics like the Indian government, political leaders and military,” it said.
It informed that these accounts or groups were found to be linked to employees of ISPR of Pakistan’s military.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found that it was linked to employees of the ISPR (Inter-Service Public Relations) of the Pakistani military,” it said.
Below is a sample of the content posted by some of these Pages:
These activities were operational through 24 Facebook pages, 57 accounts, seven groups and 15 Instagram accounts.
About 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 4,700 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and around 1,050 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts, Facebook said.