Facebook (we still have trouble referring to the parent company as “Meta,” especially here in Israel) last week targeted and removed over 150 accounts linked to the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
A statement released by Meta read:
“We removed 141 Facebook accounts, 79 Pages, 13 Groups and 21 Instagram accounts from the Gaza Strip in Palestine [sic] that primarily targeted people in Palestine [sic], and to a much lesser extent in Egypt and Israel.
“We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and linked it to Hamas.”
We’ll ignore Meta’s repeated reference to a still-fictional country called “Palestine” since that’s par for the course, and focus on parsing what this means.
Much as it accused Russia of doing, Meta is saying that Hamas created a network of phony accounts in order to promote its agenda on the social networks in question. These accounts, most of which purported to belong to attractive young women, would then like and share posts critical of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and supportive of Hamas.