On August 1, 2019, as part of a broader takedown, Facebook removed 387 assets that had “links to individuals associated with the government of Saudi Arabia” and that propagated, among other things, content designed to undermine Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to attack the ruling family of Qatar, and to push anti-Iran narratives to Arabic-speaking audiences.

In its announcement, Facebook also stated:

The Page admins and account owners typically posted in Arabic about regional news and political issues, including topics like the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, his economic and social reform plan “Vision 2030,” and successes of the Saudi Armed Forces, particularly during the conflict in Yemen. They also frequently shared criticism of neighboring countries including Iran, Qatar and Turkey, and called into question the credibility of Al-Jazeera news network and Amnesty International.

This is not the first influence campaign with possible links to the Saudi government. Bellingcat, an independent investigative website, previously investigated social media operations conducted by Saud Al-Qahtani, a high-level adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (frequently referred to by his initials, “MBS”), on behalf of the royal court. This is, however, the first time that Facebook itself has directly attributed activity on its platform to somebody with connections to the Saudi government.

Facebook shared a subset of 93 assets from the set with the DFRLab. There was insufficient open-source evidence within the subset to provide conclusive attribution of this operation to the Saudi government. Nonetheless, the pages generally supported the interests of the Saudi ruling family and military.

Pages Targeting Erdoğan and Turkey

The assassination of the U.S.-based journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, tested Saudi-Turkish diplomatic and political relations. A month after Khashoggi’s death, Erdoğan authored an op-ed in The Washington Post, where Khashoggi had worked as a columnist, in which he implicated the Saudi government in Khashoggi’s death, though he refrained from mentioning MBS directly.

The creation dates of the pages posting content about Erdoğan indicated that they were created after Khashoggi’s disappearance, suggesting the operation may have targeted Erdoğan for his vocal stance on Khashoggi’s murder.

One of the pages from the takedown, سفر برلك (“Seferbarlik”) had over 130,000 followers on Facebook and also had an associated Instagram account.