Facebook bans fake accounts liked to Russian conspiracy groups.

Facebook has uncovered and exposed and removed dozens of fake accounts and pages that are liked to an Iranian conspiracy group. The posts focused on divisive topics such as race relations, opposition to US president Donald Trump and immigration. According to BBC, no ties so far have been found to link this to the Iranian government.

Facebook uncovered 82 pages, groups and accounts that were posting the same stories and conspiracies on Facebook and Instagram in violation of the platforms policies. The activity was first spotted in June 2016 but elevated during the previous year. A research facility at Atlantic council said that the people who were controlling these accounts were acting as American liberals. 

These propagandas appeared more varied with anti-Israel and anti-Saudi Arabia commentary mixed in the posts saying “This evolution of tactics from previous more blarant pro-Iranian messaging suggests the operation had learned from earlier takedowns” the council said.

Facebook was not yet sure how many people were affected by the fake news and fake events that were being spread on Facebook but according to the Atlantic council some of these pages already have got millions of followers. Facebook then released a report that more than one million people followed at least one of the 30 Facebook pages belonging to these groups while about 25,000 people joined at least one of the three groups. 

The fake accounts also created seven fake events on Facebook that attracted followers.

This follows after Facebook took the action of removing hundreds of accounts earlier in August that were linked to these Russian and Iranian groups.