Facebook removes Pakistani accounts over 'inauthentic behaviour'
In all, the company removed more than 800 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups in August, its report on coordinated inauthentic behaviour revealed on Tuesday.
This included two other networks: one based in Russia and focusing on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt; and one based in the US and focused on Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia.
The largest network was based in Pakistan and consisted of 453 Facebook accounts, 103 pages, 78 groups and 107 Instagram accounts, the report said.
Facebook shared details of the network with the Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Centre days before taking down the pages.
The network encouraged members of its groups to use an extension to Google's Chrome browser developed for the purpose of automating the reporting of content on Facebook and its associated platforms.
The aim of the network appeared primarily to be to silence critics of Pakistan's government and armed forces, as well as certain forms of religious expression.
Many of the Instagram accounts appeared to primarily have been removed because they were being operated from Pakistan while being claiming to represent Indian nationals.
In total, the reach of the network was significant, Facebook said, with about 70,000 accounts following one or more of the pages, about 1.1 million members and 11,000 followers on Instagram.
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