In its latest threat assessment report, Facebook* and Instagram’s* parent company Meta said it has taken down a “brigading network” of about 300 accounts in India that “worked together to mass-harass people, including activists, comedians, actors and other influencers” that were posting content “deemed offensive to Hindus.”
“This network was active across the internet, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Telegram. On our apps, the individuals behind this activity relied on a combination of authentic and duplicate accounts — many of which were disabled for violating our rules against hate speech and harassment by our scaled, automated systems,” the threat assessment report released on Friday said.
According to the report, the "brigading network" would call on others to harass people who posted content the group deemed offensive to Hindus.
“The members of this network would then post high volumes of negative comments under the targets’ posts. In response, some people would hide or delete their posts leading to celebratory comments claiming a 'successful raid,'” the report added.
The company also listed the factors that were taken into consideration while investigating the accounts, which included repetitive targeting to harass or silence people, usually with unsolicited messages or comments, coordination signals, high volume of activity, and efforts to evade enforcement.
The company has also taken down several clusters, nearly 2,000 accounts, pages, and groups from its social media platforms that targeted women in India with sexualizing content and harassment.
“The people behind each cluster of activity used authentic and duplicate accounts to manage Pages and Groups and flock to female users’ accounts with uninvited content, including nudity, sexual solicitation and hate speech,” the report said.
Meta added that in at least one case, an account had targeted at least 700 people.
It said the most common content violation done by the network was sexual solicitation, hate speech, bullying, and harassment.
The social media giant has also taken action against a group of hackers in Pakistan, known as APT36 in the security industry, that targeted people in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, including military personnel, government officials, employees of human rights and other non-profit organizations, and students.
*The activity of Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is banned in Russia as extremist.