Facebook has discovered an Iranian influence campaign that was followed by more than 1 million people

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has detected a coordinated influence campaign run out of Iran that has created pages and groups followed by more than 1 million accounts on the social network.

The social network said on Friday that it had taken down 30 pages, 33 Facebook accounts, and 3 groups on Facebook - as well as 16 accounts on Instagram - that were tied to the campaign, which it described as "inauthentic behavior." The pages posted politically divisive content targeted at users in the US and the UK in apparent attempts to sow divisions.

"Our threat intelligence team first detected this activity one week ago. Given the elections, we took action as soon as we'd completed our initial investigation and shared the information with US and UK government officials, US law enforcement, Congress, other technology companies and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab," Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher wrote in a blog post. "However, it's still early days and while we have found no ties to the Iranian government, we can't say for sure who is responsible."

The news comes after Facebook said it had disrupted an earlier Iranian influence campaign in August 2018. There is "some overlap" between the two efforts.

This story is developing...