Russia and Iran largest sources of influence campaigns, according to Facebook

Russia and Iran are home to the most organizations that seek to manipulate or corrupt the public debate in a coordinated manner, according to Facebook. This is according to a report from the social media company. The United States was most affected by the influence campaigns.

According to Facebook’s security experts, since 2017, the company has taken offline more than 150 attempts to influence it that violated its policy against Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior. The company has also identified and removed 150 networks since 2017 that, according to the authors of the security report, had the purpose of misleading social media users.

The report shows that 27 of these networks could be linked to Russia and 23 networks to Iran. According to Facebook, 9 networks were active in the United States and Myanmar. The United States was the primary target. Facebook says it has removed 26 coordinated networks from its platforms that were operating in that country. Both the United Kingdom and Myanmar had to deal with 11 influence campaigns each.