Facebook removes ’fake’ UAE, Egypt accounts for paid disinformation operation – BBC Monitoring
▻https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2015157
Facebook’s takedown of hundreds of “fake” accounts originating in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Nigeria has laid bare the increasing role of marketing and PR firms in running paid information operations on behalf of clients with political agendas.
The accounts pushed political messages against Qatar, Iran and Turkey, and were accompanied by a well-funded campaign of ads costing tens of thousands of dollars.
This is the second time since August that Facebook is removing inauthentic accounts run by marketing firms in the UAE and Egypt. The latest batch of accounts seems to be part of a larger operation uncovered in August.
In September, Twitter said it had taken action against a “multi-faceted” information operation comprised of 267 accounts originating in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The accounts were created and managed by DotDev, a private technology company operating in the two countries. They primarily targeted Qatar and Iran and supported Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis and their allies in the Middle East, including Egypt and the UAE, are at loggerheads with both Tehran and Doha over a range of regional and international disputes.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook’s cyber-security policy, said in a blog post that all the accounts were removed for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”.
Facebook defines “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” as “when groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they are doing”.
“We saw that they used a large volume of fake accounts, and those accounts were used for one of two purposes,” David Agranovich, global threat disruption lead at Facebook, told BuzzFeed News. “Either to run Pages... or using fake accounts to engage directly on their content.”
There is no evidence that any of the operations was sponsored by a state.
Criticism of Qatar, Turkey and Iran
Three marketing firms had spent nearly $150,000 in Facebook ads
FACEBOOK
Three marketing firms had spent nearly $150,000 in Facebook ads
The first operation involved 211 Facebook accounts, 107 pages, 43 groups and 87 Instagram accounts that originated in the UAE, Egypt and Nigeria.
Despite attempts by those behind the operation to conceal their identities, Facebook found links to three marketing firms: Charles Communications in the UAE, MintReach in Nigeria and Flexell in Egypt.
Two notable facts about the operation are its huge reach and financial expenditure.
The Facebook pages run by the firms had less than 1.4 million followers. On Instagram, the accounts had less than 70,000 followers. They spent less than $150,000 (£121,000) on Facebook ads paid for primarily in US dollars, Emirati dirham and Indian rupee.
The operation had clear political objectives with localised content for a specific country or region, primarily in the Middle East and Africa, and some in Europe, North and South America, South Asia and East Asia, and Australia.
In addition to promoting the UAE’s image in the targeted countries and regions, they posted on a variety of political topics, including elections and candidates; the UAE’s activity in Yemen; the first Emirati astronaut; criticism of Qatar, Turkey and Iran; the Iran nuclear deal, and criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood.