14 DAY TRIAL // 30 Facebook accounts and 85 Instagram profiles have been removed by Facebook following suspicions of "coordinated inauthentic behavior" according to Facebook's Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher.
"On Sunday evening, US law enforcement contacted us about online activity that they recently discovered and which they believe may be linked to foreign entities," said Gleicher.
All the misbehaving accounts that were immediately disabled and are currently being investigated in more detail.
Moreover, according to Gleicher "Almost all the Facebook Pages associated with these accounts appear to be in the French or Russian languages, while the Instagram accounts seem to have mostly been in English — some were focused on celebrities, others political debate."
The announcement was made even though Facebook did not have any other information regarding the removed accounts' actions as a move to let the public know that the social network is guarding their interests.
Facebook acted on a warning received from US law enforcement agencies on Sunday evening
Gleicher also stated that "Once we know more — including whether these accounts are linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency or other foreign entities — we will update this post."
This is not the first time Facebook removed dozens of accounts at one time because of spam or "coordinated inauthentic behavior," with the social network having disabled 82 Iranian-connected pages, groups, and accounts on October 26.
Even more, on October 11, Facebook identified and removed 559 pages and 251 accounts which were posting "massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites ."
The social network's reaction to these spam accounts and pages is more than warranted "Because people will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here," as Gleicher previously said when Facebook deleted those 819 accounts for breaking both spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior rules.