LONDON: Facebook said on Thursday it removed hundreds of Russia-linked pages, groups and accounts that it says were part of two big disinformation operations targeting users outside the US

The social media company said its latest effort to fight misinformation came after it found two networks “that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behaviour” on Facebook and its Instagram service.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in a blog post that one network operated in countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Central Asia and the Caucasus. The other focused on Ukraine. “We didn’t find any links between these operations, but they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” Gleicher said.

According to Facebook, the people running the accounts represented themselves as independent news sources and posted on topics like anti-Nato sentiment and protest movements.

Gleicher said one network of 364 pages and accounts was linked to employees of Sputnik, a Russian state-run English-language news site. About 790,000 accounts followed one or more of the network’s pages.

The operation spent about $135,000 over six years for Facebook advertisements, which it paid for in euros, rubles and dollars. The most recent ad ran in January.

Sputnik criticised Facebook’s takedown.

“The decision is clearly political. This is tantamount to censorship,” Sputnik said in a statement to The Associated Press, adding that Facebook blocked the accounts of seven of its bureaus in former Soviet republics. “Sputnik editorial offices deal with news and they do it well. If this blocking is Facebook’s only reaction to the quality of the media’s work, then we have no questions, everything is clear here. But there is still hope that common sense will prevail.”

Acting on a tip from US law enforcement, Facebook shut another 148 pages, groups and accounts, including 41 on Instagram, that were part of a second network that spent $25,000 on ads in 2018, paid for in rubles.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2019