Facebook removes thousands more Russian accounts for pro Brexit and other 'inauthentic behaviour'

'We don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people [but] the people responsible are determined and well-funded,' says Facebook's head of cyber security

The icon for the Facebook app shown on a smartphone screen in Moscow on 28 March 28, 2018 (AFP/Getty Images)

Facebook has removed thousands more accounts from Iran and Russian due to suspicious activity on the social network, including pro-Brexit posts.

The company announced that a total of 2,643 pages, groups and accounts had been found to engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" on Facebook and Instagram.

A number of accounts originating from Macedonia and Kosovo were also removed, after Pages purporting to represent political communities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States were discovered.

Among the suspicious posts cited by Facebook in its report were some calling for UK politicians in favour of remaining in the European Union to resign.

A link to an article from a site claiming to be a news website was included in the post.

A post calling for pro-EU politicians to resign (Facebook)

Of the 2,632 pages, groups and accounts removes, 513 were tied to Iran, while 1,907 were linked to Russia, Facebook said.

"We didn’t find any links between these sets of activities, but they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing," Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook's cyber security policy, wrote in the report.

"We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people."

Facebook's efforts to stem these types of coordinated misinformation campaigns are ongoing, Mr Gleicher added, with collaborations with law enforcement agencies already underway.

"While we are making progress rooting out this abuse, as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing challenge because the people responsible are determined and well-funded," he wrote.

Facebook has previously faced criticism for its role in allowing its users' data to be used for the purpose of political profiling during the UK's 2016 EU referendum.

It was also forced to remove hundreds of accounts tied to Iran earlier this year.