On April 1, Facebook took down over 700 assets that were posting partisan content on Indian politics ahead of the country’s national elections, ruling that they had engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior”. A number of large pages on Facebook and Instagram supported the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); several dozen smaller Facebook pages were linked to the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC).

Social media are already a major battleground in India’s pre-election fervor. The BJP has long been accused of running deceptive social-media accounts and disinformation campaigns from inside its so-called “IT cells.” The INC is reported to have followed suit, although the latter operation is allegedly suffering from internal disputes.

In a blog post, Facebook explained three “separate and unrelated” actions, which included:

We removed 687 Facebook Pages and accounts — the majority of which had already been detected and disabled by our automated systems — that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior in India and were linked to individuals associated with an IT Cell of the Indian National Congress (INC). We removed 15 Facebook Pages, Groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior in India and were linked to individuals associated with an Indian IT firm, Silver Touch. We removed 321 Facebook Pages and accounts in India that have broken our rules against spam. Unlike the first three actions, this last activity does not represent a single or coordinated operation — instead, these are multiple sets of Pages and accounts that behaved similarly and violated our policies.

The pro-BJP assets carried vitriolic posts against opposition leaders and managed to garner high engagement, while the INC-linked assets pushed satirical posts but garnered moderate engagement.

The fact that partisans on both sides resorted to such tactics is a troubling feature. It suggests that such inauthentic behavior may increasingly be considered a necessary part of political campaigning, with the expectation that the other side will also be conducting such activity. That, in turn, suggests that the platforms, and voters, will continue to face more challenges from more directions, as they try to distinguish between genuine and inauthentic content.

Simultaneously, Facebook took down a set of Indian pages that posted spam, and a set of pages linked to Pakistan that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB). The DFRLab analyzed the Indian and Pakistan pages engaged in CIB, but not the spam pages.

The India Eye

The takedown included two pro-BJP pages called “The India Eye,” which Facebook removed from its own platform and Instagram. These were significant assets: by the time of the takedown, the Facebook page had over 2 million followers. According to The Wire, “The India Eye” was connected to an Indian IT company called Silver Touch Technologies Ltd, which also created Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official app.

Home page for The India Eye, showing the number of likes and follows on the right. (Source: The India Eye/archive)

The page was strongly nationalist, a vocal supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and a critic of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.