Policy rationale
Inauthentic Behaviour refers to a variety of complex forms of deception, performed by a network of inauthentic assets controlled by the same individual or individuals, with the goal of deceiving Meta or our community or to evade enforcement under the Community Standards.
Where adversarial threat actors use false identities to engage in sophisticated forms of Inauthentic Behaviour, they engage in what we’ve defined as Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB).
These enforcement actions and standards apply agnostic of content or ideology and are designed to create a space, where people can trust the people and communities that they interact with.
When we identify these networks, we remove the fake accounts, Pages, Groups or other Meta assets directly involved in the operation. In cases where these people also create, manage, co-opt, target or control Pages, Groups or communities that represent authentic entities not involved in the violating behaviour, we may take steps to remove the violating individuals, but allow the uninvolved people and communities to remain on our services.
Whenever possible, we share our findings about networks of CIB in our Adversarial Threat Reports, found here. These reports are not meant to cover the entire universe of enforcements under the inauthentic behaviour policy, but help inform our community’s understanding of the evolving nature of threats that we face in this space.
We do not allow:
The creation, use or claimed use of Inauthentic Meta Assets (Accounts, Pages, Groups etc.) in order to:
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Deceive Meta or our users about the identity, or origin of an audience or the entity that they represent
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To evade enforcement under the Community Standards.
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Misuse Meta reporting systems to harass, intimidate or silence others.
For the following Community Standards, we require additional information and/or context to enforce:
We do not allow:
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Entities to engage in, or claim to engage in Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour, defined as particularly sophisticated forms of Inauthentic Behaviour where false identities are central to the operation and operators use adversarial methods to evade detection or appear authentic; and
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Entities to engage in, or claim to engage in Foreign Interference, defined as Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour where the network operators are not located in the same country as the audience the operation targets
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Governments that have instituted sustained blocks of social media to use their official departments, agencies and embassies to deny the use of force or violent events in the context of an attack against the territorial integrity of another state in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN charter.
