Facebook has removed nearly 800 accounts stemming from Iran for “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a blog post on Thursday, as part of its continued push to remove misinformation from its platform. Many of the purged accounts shared anti-Semitic cartoons and memes critical of Israel, according to examples shared by Facebook.
Altogether, 783 pages, accounts and groups were removed from Facebook and Instagram. The accounts were taken down not for the content they posted, but for using fake accounts and misrepresenting themselves, Facebook said. These accounts often repurposed Iranian state media and shared it across several different countries, although its primary focus was on the Middle East and South Asia.