Facebook published its first Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report on Monday, in which the company claimed that they had moved a network of fake pages and accounts allegedly operated by Vietnam’s Viettel and Myanmar’s Mytel. The network of fake accounts were created for the purpose of discrediting their competitors through the popular social media platform. In the report, Facebook claimed that the two telcos ran 13 fake accounts and 10 pages that were continuously posting critical commentary about their competitors within the industry.
The accounts, which posed as customers of the competing telcos, gained over 265,000 followers in total. According to Facebook’s report, the telcos spent almost $1.3 million on Facebook advertisements to spread the fraudulent accounts. The report published on Monday was the first of its kind from Facebook, and the company plans to release more on a monthly basis.
Read More: Facebook claims Myanmar telco spent $1.2m on fake accounts to criticise competitors
