Meta announced the deletion of dozens of accounts linked to the Iranian regime for violating the company’s policies on creating fake accounts and engaging in coordinated activities to mislead people. All these accounts were directed from Iran.
According to the published report, Meta identified and deleted 22 Facebook accounts, 8 pages, 8 groups, and 23 Instagram accounts in the first quarter of 2024.
The fake accounts belonged to fictitious personas in this network, consisting of several distinct subsets, and posed as Israeli citizens living inside or outside the country.
These seemingly Israeli individuals managed groups, pages, and also handled content posting.
Meta emphasized that the Iranian regime’s deception operations through these accounts were not limited to the company’s platforms, and the mentioned personas were also active on other platforms like Telegram, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok to legitimize their activities.
According to Meta, individuals in this network primarily published news and current events about Israel in Hebrew. A group of these accounts introduced themselves as right-wing supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu and published content in his support until the October 7th Hamas attack against Israel.
However, immediately after the start of the Hamas-Israel war, these accounts began posting content criticizing the Israeli government’s policies regarding the ongoing war.
One branch of this network, in an effort to create division, published content supporting Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli politician and Minister of National Security.
Another group of identified accounts posed as liberal Israeli women and published content about anti-government protests in Israel.
The published report noted that these network accounts were identified and deleted before they could gain a significant audience. The groups and pages of this network had a total of 2,300 followers before being deleted.
On Instagram, about 2,300 followers followed the accounts of this network. Last year, Meta also reported the deletion of fake accounts belonging to the Iranian regime.
In one of these instances, a regime-affiliated network, posing as independent media, published content aligned with Iranian government policies to influence the opinions of Turkish citizens.
In recent days, other companies, including TikTok and OpenAI, have reported identifying and deleting accounts of the Iranian regime from their platforms in similar reports.
In its report, OpenAI stated that a media cover group named International Union of Virtual Media was misusing ChatGPT services for propaganda activities.
TikTok’s report also indicates that the Iranian regime was creating fake accounts on this social network to attract an audience and influence the minds of American and British citizens.
