(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook, has removed more than 1,000 user accounts on its Facebook and Instagram apps that were part of a “troll farm” coordinated and operated by different organizations within the Nicaraguan government.
The operation, which also included 140 Pages and two dozen groups, “posted positive content about the government and negative commentary about the opposition,” Meta wrote Monday in a blog post. The company forbids efforts to intentionally mislead people about who runs an account.
The network started in 2018 when the government “repressed a wave of student-led nationwide protests,” and while some accounts were flagged and removed automatically early on, the network was difficult to detect because of its complexity and its use of other social media services in addition to Facebook, said Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead detecting influence operations.
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