We’re constantly working to find and stop coordinated campaigns that seek to manipulate public debate across our apps.
Purpose of This Report
Over the past four years, we’ve shared our findings about coordinated inauthentic behavior we detect and remove from our platforms. As part of our regular CIB reports, we’re sharing information about all networks we take down over the course of a month to make it easier for people to see the progress we’re making in one place.
Summary of October 2021 Findings
Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive campaigns around the world — whether they are foreign or domestic. In October, we removed one network in Nicaragua targeting domestic audiences in that country. We have shared information about our findings with industry partners, researchers and policymakers.
We know that influence operations will keep evolving in response to our enforcement, and new deceptive behaviors will emerge. We will continue to refine our enforcement and share our findings publicly. We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before — it’s an ongoing effort and we’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead. That means building better technology, hiring more people and working closely with law enforcement, security experts and other companies.
(We will update the numbers as soon as the latest data becomes available.)
Here are the numbers related to the new CIB networks we removed in October:
- Total number of Facebook accounts removed: 937
- Total number of Instagram accounts removed: 363
- Total number of Pages removed: 140
- Total number of Groups removed: 24
Networks removed in October 2021:
- Nicaragua: We removed a network of 937 Facebook accounts, 140 Pages, 24 Groups and 363 Instagram accounts in Nicaragua. This operation targeted domestic audiences in that country and was linked to the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party. We found one portion of this network through our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region, and another portion — as a result of reviewing public reporting about some of this activity.
See the full report for more information.
Learn More About Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB)
We view CIB as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation. There are two types of these activities that we work to stop: 1) coordinated inauthentic behavior in the context of domestic, non-government campaigns and 2) coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government actor.
When we find campaigns that include groups of accounts and Pages seeking to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing while relying on fake accounts, we remove both inauthentic and authentic accounts, Pages and Groups directly involved in this activity.
Continuous Enforcement
We monitor for efforts to re-establish a presence on Facebook by networks we previously removed. Using both automated and manual detection, we continuously remove accounts and Pages connected to networks we took down in the past.
