Facebook Removes Fake Accounts Linked To Hamas

Israeli media report­ed ear­li­er this month that Face­book removed a net­work of over 150 accounts linked to Hamas, a mil­i­tant Islamist group, for vio­lat­ing its pol­i­cy against coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior. Accord­ing to a report by i24 News:

Decem­ber 2, 2021 Social media com­pa­ny Meta said on Wednes­day that it removed a net­work of over 150 Face­book and Insta­gram accounts believed to be linked to Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant group Hamas.  “We removed 141 Face­book accounts, 79 Pages, 13 Groups and 21 Insta­gram accounts from the Gaza Strip in Pales­tine that pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed peo­ple in Pales­tine, and to a much less­er extent in Egypt and Israel,” Meta announced in its month­ly Adver­sar­i­al Threat Report.  “We found this activ­i­ty as part of our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into sus­pect­ed coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior in the region and linked it to Hamas.” Coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior is “efforts to manip­u­late pub­lic debate for a strate­gic goal where fake accounts are cen­tral to the oper­a­tion,” as Meta defines it. […] About 407,000 accounts fol­lowed one or more of these Face­book Pages and rough­ly $21,000 was spent by the net­work for ads on Face­book and Insta­gram, paid for pri­mar­i­ly in US dollars.

Read the rest here.

Found­ed in 1987, the Hamas char­ter says that it is one of the wings of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Palestine.

For more on Hamas, go here.