Translation:
Caption: Local farmers’ heartfelt voices on the
support of rice, oil, salt, beans and food supplies
from military families for families affected by the
drought
3. We removed 589 Facebook accounts, 7,665 Pages and 437 accounts on
Instagram that were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This network
originated in Azerbaijan and focused primarily on domestic audiences. (Updated on
November 6, 2020 at 9:00AM PT to reflect the latest enforcement numbers.)
While the individuals behind this activity used fake accounts — some of which had
been already detected and disabled by our automated systems, they primarily relied
on authentic accounts to create Pages designed to look like user profiles — using
false names and stock images — to comment and artificially boost the popularity of
particular pro-government content. This network appeared to engage individuals in
Azerbaijan to manage Pages with the sole purpose of leaving supportive and critical
commentary on Pages of international and local media, public figures including
opposition and the ruling party of Azerbaijan, to create a perception of wide-spread
criticism of some views and wide-spread support of others. From what we’ve seen, it
appears that most of the engagement these comments received were from within
this network of Pages themselves. Our analysis shows that these comments were
posted in what appears to be regular shifts during working hours in Azerbaijan on
weekdays.