NEW DELHI:  Facebook Inc has removed 687 pages and accounts linked to India’s Congress party. The pages have been removed citing “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on the social media platform.

The announcement marks a rare action from Facebook against a prominent political party in a country where it has more than 300 million users, the highest in the world.

Facebook said its investigation found that individuals used fake accounts and joined various groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement. Their posts included local news and criticism of political opponents such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Facebook said.

The social media giant also said it was removing 103 pages, groups and accounts, also for inauthentic behavior, as part of a network which originated in Pakistan and was linked to employees of the Inter-Service Public Relations department of the Pakistani military.

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