People connected to the government of Saudi Arabia have run a network of fake accounts and pages on Facebook Inc to promote state propaganda and attack regional rivals, the social media giant said on Thursday.
Facebook said it had suspended more than 350 accounts and pages with about 1.4 million followers, the latest takedown in an ongoing effort to combat "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" on its platform, and the first such activity it has linked to the Saudi government.
"The government of Saudi Arabia has no knowledge of the mentioned accounts and does not know on what basis they were linked to it," the Center for International Communication, the government's media office, said in a statement sent to Reuters.
Reuters detailed an expansive Iranian-backed campaign last year and Riyadh has been accused of using the same tactics to attack Qatar and spread disinformation following the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"For this operation, our investigators were able to confirm that the individuals behind this are associated with the government of Saudi Arabia," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy.
"Anytime we have a link between an information operation and a government, that's significant and people should be aware."
Gleicher said the Saudi campaign operated on Facebook and its Instagram photo-sharing platform, primarily targeting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Qatar, the UAE, Egypt Palestine.
The operation used fake accounts posing as those countries' citizens and pages designed to look like local news outlets. More than $100,000 was spent on advertisements, Facebook said.
"They would typically post in Arabic about regional news and political issues. They would talk about things like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - his internal and economic social reform plan, the successes of the Saudi armed forces, particularly during the conflict in Yemen," said Gleicher.
Andy Carvin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Lab, which worked with Facebook to analyse the Saudi campaign, said some of the accounts dated back to early 2014 but the majority had been created in the last two years.
More than 90% of the content was in Arabic, Carvin said, with some of the accounts "essentially operating as fan pages for the Saudi government and military."
A copy of one of the Saudi posts released by Facebook on Thursday showed the crown prince kissing the bandaged head of a patient in a hospital bed. The Arabic caption reads: "His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman kisses the head of a wounded soldier."
