Social media giant Facebook said on both its Facebook and Instagram sites it has suspended multiple accounts involved in what it terms "coordinated inauthentic conduct."

"We removed multiple sites, groups and accounts engaged in organized inauthentic activity on Facebook and Instagram," Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, wrote in a Thursday article.



“We found three separate operations: one of which originated in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Nigeria, and the other two in Indonesia and Egypt.”

Coordinated inauthentic behavior is defined by Facebook as “when groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they’re doing,” as outlined by Gleicher in a post from December 2018.

Firms that Facebook alleged had links to the activities included Charles Communications in the UAE, MintReach in Nigeria, and Egypt’s Flexell in the first case. Facebook said InsightID in Indonesia and El Fagr in Egypt allegedly had links to the other two cases, respectively.

Gleicher said the moves to take down the pages, groups and accounts were based on their behavior and not the content that was posted.

“In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis of our action,” Gleicher said.

Social media firms such as Facebook and Twitter face increasing scrutiny by governments outside the United States.

Both companies previously removed accounts from its platforms for what they said was a disinformation campaign against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.