Facebook removes over 100 Pakistani army 'assets' against India

ISLAMABAD: Facebook has purged over 100 propaganda pages, groups and accounts of Pakistani army targeted against India, especially Kashmir.

The social media giant on Monday announced that it removed 103 Pakistani-origin “assets” - pages, groups and accounts - linked to employees of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), army’s media wing, involved in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. The pages were deleted in “four separate takedowns - each distinct and unconnected”, for violating Facebook’s policies.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cyber security policy, in a statement said that about 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these Pages, 4,700 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and 1,050 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts, Facebook said. Around $1,100 was spent on the ads on Facebook and paid in US dollars and Pakistani rupees. The first ad ran in May 2015 and the most recent ad ran in December 2018.

The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts to operate military fan pages; general Pakistani interest pages; Kashmir community pages; and hobby and news pages. They also frequently posted about local and political news including topics like the Indian government, political leaders, and military, the statement said.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found that it was linked to employees of the ISPR of the Pakistani military.” Separately, Gleicher told a Pakistani media outlet that Facebook could not say whether the activity was directed by the organisation (ISPR) or the employees were acting on their own.

“There were multiple employees engaged in this. Facebook is “highly confident” of the identity of the people involved,” he said, adding that Facebook was removing accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted.

“For security purposes we cannot get too specific about how we make these links because this sort of monitoring is an ongoing activity. One of the ways we make these links is when we see someone operating one of these fake accounts, and then they log into their own account,” he said.

The statement issued by social media platform said its investigation found that the network in Pakistan was spread across 24 pages on Facebook and Instagram, 57 Facebook accounts, seven Facebook groups, and 15 Instagram accounts.