Meta identifies Iran and Turkey's network of ‘adversarial threat’

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, identified new networks in Iran and Turkey that included coordinated inauthentic behavior. This usually means websites or pages that are trying to spread types of stories linked to regimes. Meta publishes a quarterly threat report where it details these influence operations.   

“Our public threat reporting began about six years ago when we first shared our findings about  coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) by a Russian covert influence operation. Since then, we  have expanded our ability to respond to a wider range of adversarial behaviors as global threats  have continued to evolve. To provide a more comprehensive view into the risks we tackle, we’ve also expanded our regular threat reports to include other emerging threats and our detailed insights,” Meta noted in the report. 

On August 29 Meta noted “today, we’re publishing our second quarter reports for 2023, including the Oversight Board Quarterly Update, Widely Viewed Content Report and the Adversarial Threat Report. All of these reports are available in our Transparency Center. The Community Standards Enforcement Report will be available in early September.” 

 Network threats from Turkey and Iran

In the report they note that they identified three networks that originated in Turkey and Iran targeting audiences in Turkey.

The report says that Meta “removed 22 Facebook accounts, 21 Pages and seven Instagram accounts for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

It also notes that “the people behind this activity operated a network of websites posing as independent news entities where they posted primarily in Turkish about news and current events in the Middle East region, including supportive commentary about Iran and Palestine; verbatim statements by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and critical commentary about Israel, the United States, the Turkish government and the Justice and Development Party (AKP).”  

The operation used “unwitting authors to create content.”

In addition, “this campaign attempted to post links to its websites across multiple internet services including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.”  

The report illustrates how activity can also originate in Iran and be routed through Turkey.

“The individuals behind this network used fake accounts – some of which were detected and removed by our automated systems – to manage Pages, post content, and drive people to their  off-platform domains. We removed them before they were able to build an audience.”