Iran was behind a sprawling disinformation operation on Facebook that targeted hundreds of thousands of people around the world, the social media company said Tuesday night, underscoring Silicon Valley’s increasingly global war on disinformation. The Iranian effort dated to 2011 and had ties to state media operations in that country, Facebook said, involving hundreds of accounts on both Facebook and its sister site, Instagram. The fake Iranian accounts also bought ads on the social media platform and used it to organize events. The FireEye post also said that it had identified Twitter accounts directly affiliated with the Facebook pages that were linked to phone numbers with the +98 Iranian country code. Facebook, Twitter and Google are expected to testify at a September 5 hearing in the Senate focused on foreign interference in U.S. politics and social media.

Source: Washington Post August 21, 2018 23:34 UTC