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American social media network Facebook has deleted several pages, groups and accounts engaged in «coordinated inauthentic behavior», targeting Morocco and other countries in the MENA region.
In a communiqué made public Thursday, Facebook said that it «found two separate operations: one of which originated in United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and another in Saudi Arabia. The two campaigns we removed were unconnected, but both created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing».
The platform explained that it shared information with «law enforcement, industry partners and policymakers».
Facebook reports that as part of the first operation included 259 Facebook accounts, 120 pages, five groups and four events, as well as 17 Instagram accounts that were all removed and which targeted «the Middle East and some in North and East Africa, including Libya, Sudan, Comoros, Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Morocco».
These pages were followed by more than 13.7 million accounts and spent $167,000 on Facebook ads paid mainly in US dollars and Emirati dirhams.
The second operation included «217 Facebook accounts, 144 Facebook Pages, five Facebook Groups and 31 Instagram accounts», which «involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior originating from Saudi Arabia that focused primarily on the Middle East and Northern Africa, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan».
