Facebook has confirmed people connected to the government of Saudi Arabia were trying to spread state propaganda and attack neighboring countries.
This the first time the country’s government have been linked to ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ on the platform Reuters reported.
More than 350 accounts with over 1.4 million followers were suspended as part of the bust by the social media giant.
Nathaniel Gleicher Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy revealed the development that was unearthed by its internal investigators.
‘Any time we have a link between an information operation and a government, that’s significant and people should be aware,’ Gleicher told Reuters.
The campaigns were mainly written in Arabic and targeted at countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and Palestine.
People connected to the Saudi Arabia government were trying to spread disinformation on Facebook according to the social media giant
Gleicher (right) head of Facebook’s cybersecurity revealed that posts were made by over 350 accounts with around 1.4 million. They would spread fake regional news and showed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (left) in a positive light including posting doctored photos.
Gleicher said the campaigns were operated on Facebook and Instagram, using fake accounts to pose as citizens from those countries as well as pages made to appear like news outlets.
He added: ‘They would typically post in Arabic about regional news and political issues.
‘They would talk about things like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – his internal and economic social reform plan, the successes of the Saudi armed forces, particularly during the conflict in Yemen said’
One post, revealed by Facebook on Thursday showed the crown prince kissing the head of a patient in a hospital bed whose head was covered with a bandage.
Some of the now disabled accounts dated back as far as 2014 but the majority were created within the last two years, according to senior fellow Andy Carvin.
Carvin from Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab worked with Facebook to analyze the Saudi campaign, describing the content as ‘fan pages for the Saudi government and military.’
Bin Salman (right) has come under fire from Facebook’s team for trying to use the platform to spread disinformation. Here the Saudi leader met Mark Zuckerberg (left) in 2016
Fake content had been disseminated about bin Salman (above) including a doctored picture showing him kissing the bandaged head of a wounded soldier
An additional $100,000 was spent in advertisements, Facebook confirmed.
Countries within the Middle East have been found to have used social media to try to exert influence.
This has included campaigns from Iran last year of a similar veil, Reuters found.
The Saudi Arabian capital city of Riyadh had also been accused of using the same tactics to attack Qatar, a regional rival.
They also furthered disinformation after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Facebook discovered.
Bin Salman and the country denied assassinating the veteran journalist after his disappearance last October.
He was last seen walking into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming wedding,.
This Sunday the nation will host a media forum and awards ceremony, The Washington Post reports. The event is being held in a bid to ‘cement Riyadh’s name as the Arab Media Capital’
It also aims to ‘boost the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s reputation as a leading country in the global political and economic arena,’ according to the site.
Saudi Arabia will hold a media forum on Sunday to celebrate its as the ‘Arab media capital’ and boost the nation’s reputation. This comes in spite of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (above) who died in Instanbul’s Saudi consulate in October
Social media platforms such as Facebook have become new battleground to spread influence and manipulate the public, The Atlantic Council found. This has including Zuckerberg’s hearings over Cambridge Analytica
Facebook announced it remove accounts and pages multiple times a month for ‘inauthentic behavior’ but direct links to a government are rare.
The social media giant has made 14 public announcements this regarding take-downs this year alone, they have originated from 17 different countries.
The most recent included accounts run by people in Thailand, Russia, Ukraine and Honduras.
Ben Nimmo from The Atlantic Council told Reuters that information operations on social media had become the modern day ‘battleground.’
‘Particularly in the Gulf, where you’ve got very strong regional rivalries and you’ve got a long tradition of working through proxies,’ Nimmo said.
‘Where you get geopolitical tensions, you get stuff like this going on, and we’re moving into a space where the platforms are dealing with this almost as routine,’ he added. ‘This is almost becoming normalized.’
In a separate bust, Facebook also suspended a separate network of more than 350 accounts linked to marketing firms in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – they were not linked to any governments.
The Saudi Government Media Office did not respond to Reuters request for comment.