Facebook Busts Iranian Dissident Group’s Elaborate Troll Farm Operation
Facebook says it busted a troll farm run by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK)—a dissident Iranian group that lobbies for the overthrow of Iran’s revolutionary government—that used artificial intelligence-generated fake faces to populate sham accounts.
The social media company linked the troll farm, based alongside the MEK’s headquarters in Albania, to 300 different assets on Facebook’s platform, including pages, groups, and accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
The MEK, which began as a Marxist revolutionary organization, opposed Iran’s monarchy in the 1970s and fought alongside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to overthrow the shah of Iran. After the revolution, the IRGC cracked down on the MEK and the group sought refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The U.S. designated the group as a terrorist organization in 1997, but the Obama administration removed the designation in 2012.