Facebook said it shut down 265 fake accounts run by an Israeli social media company Thursday for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” as it sought to affect politics in African, Latin American and Southeast Asian nations.
The move, while underscoring the increasingly global nature of social media disinformation campaigns, was unusual for singling out a company that appeared to profit from its publicized work to spread falsehoods online. Archimedes Group, the Israeli company, claims the ability to “use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client’s wishes.”
The fake accounts were on both Facebook and its photo-sharing sister site, Instagram, the company said. Archimedes Group is now banned from both.
