Meta on Sunday shut down a network of websites posing as independent news agencies or fake personas, targeting Ukrainians on Facebook and Instagram.
The misinformation campaign, Meta said, violates the company's policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
"We took this operation down, we've blocked their domains from being shared on our platform, and we've shared information about the operations with other tech platforms with researchers and with governments," David Agranovich, director of threat disruption for Meta, said in a statement published by CBS News.
The campaign consisted of about 40 fake accounts, pages, and groups targeting high-profile Ukrainian journalists, military members, and "public thinkers." Fictitious characters were also active on YouTube, Twitter, Telegram, and Russian social media sites Odnoklassniki and VK "to appear more authentic" and "avoid scrutiny," according to Agranovich.
Twitter confirmed to Reuters that it suspended more than a dozen accounts and blocked the sharing of several links for violating its rules against platform manipulation and spam.
Operators would write and post articles onto their website "as if they were a reporter or commentator," Agranovich explained. "The accounts were really just designed to post links to their own websites and direct people off platform." Before being dismantled, the network's posts received a "very low level" of shares, comments, and reactions.
Following Meta's announcement of "extensive steps" to safeguard and support users in Ukraine and around the world, the firm on Sunday said it restricted access to several accounts—including those belonging to Russian state media organizations.
Following digital attacks by hacking group Ghostwriter, which targets folks through email and uses compromised information to gain access to social media accounts, Facebook encourages users in Ukraine and Russia especially to protect their data through strong security measures like two-factor authentication.
In response to the social network's recent enforcement action against four Russian media firms, Russia's government last week revealed vague plans to "partially restrict access" to Facebook as well as restricting access to Twitter.