SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified multiple new influence campaigns on its platform that were aimed at misleading people in different countries and regions. The social network found and took down 652 fake accounts, pages and groups that were trying to sow misinformation.
The activity originated in Iran and Russia, Facebook said. Unlike with past influence operations, which largely targeted Americans, the fake accounts, pages and groups were this time also aimed at people in Latin America, Britain, the Middle East, as well as in the United States, the company said.
The scale of what was uncovered far exceeded that of another influence operation that Facebook revealed last month, in which the company said it detected and removed 32 pages and fake accounts that had engaged in activity around divisive social issues ahead of the midterm elections.
But the aims of the latest campaigns on the social network appeared to be similar to those of past operations: to distribute false news that might cause confusion among people, and to alter people’s thinking to become more partisan or pro-government on various issues.
“We believe these pages, groups and accounts were part of two sets of campaigns,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said in a conference call about the activities late Tuesday. “One from Iran, with ties to state owned media. The other came from a set of people the U.S. government and others have linked to Russia.”
The revelations underscore how Facebook continues to be used as a vessel for disinformation. After the 2016 United States presidential election, the company revealed that its site was used to spread divisive messages to voters on issues around race, gun control and the environment. The Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked group, was at the center of an indictment this year that alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The influence operation that Facebook revealed last month included one page that was joined by nearly 140,000 people, who believed they were fighting racism in the United States, while another set up dozens of events targeting left-wing activists. Facebook did not definitively link last month’s campaign to Russia, but it said some of the tools and techniques used by the accounts were similar to those used by the Internet Research Agency.
Now, those same social media influence tactics that were used in 2016 and last month appear to have been adopted increasingly by operatives in other countries as well.
Renee DiResta, director of research at New Knowledge, an organization that studies disinformation campaigns, said the revelation of Iran’s involvement “reinforces that this is an ongoing information war, that our social ecosystem is vulnerable to manipulation by a variety of adversaries, and that malign narratives are being spread to mislead people around the world.”
In a statement, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said, “There’s no way the problem of social media manipulation is limited to a single troll farm in St. Petersburg, and that fact is now beyond a doubt.” He added, “Iranians are now following the Kremlin’s playbook from 2016.”
Mr. Warner said he planned to ask tech company executives more about the matter on Sept. 5 at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington to discuss social media and disinformation. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, as well as others, are expected to appear at the hearing.
Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified some of the new influence operations last month after a tip from FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, about a network of Facebook pages called “Liberty Front Press.”
After Facebook investigated those pages, it said it linked them back to Iranian state media using their website registration information and internet protocol addresses. Some of the pages were created in 2013, the company said, and they posted political content focused on the Middle East, Latin America, Britain and the United States.
Other pages also have a far more international bent than the earlier batches uncovered by the social media company. The pages believed to have originated in Iran were written in several languages, including English, Arabic and Farsi. They carried a number of pro-Iranian themes, as well as language attacking Israel and promoting Palestinians. Some included anti-Trump language and were tied to relations between the United States and Iran, including references to the Iranian nuclear weapons deal.
But FireEye said in a preliminary report that “it is important to note that the activity does not appear to have been specifically designed to influence the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, as it extends well beyond U.S. audiences and U.S. politics.”
Newer accounts, created in 2016 and later, had additional goals, including spreading malware and stealing passwords, Facebook said. The accounts that originated in Russia focused on activity in Ukraine and Syria. They did not appear to target the United States. In Syria, the accounts also promoted a pro-Russian agenda and that of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
“For example, they are associated with Inside Syria Media Center, which the Atlantic Council and other organizations have identified for covertly spreading pro-Russian and pro-Assad content,” Facebook said in a blog post.
Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was working both with government agencies and with private companies to proactively find malicious actors using the platform.
“Authenticity matters and people need to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook,” he said.
