Facebook has blocked hundreds of social media accounts and also banned an Israeli firm due to “co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour” all mainly targeting Africa.
The firm said that the fake accounts often posted political news, including on elections in various countries.
And for failing to obliterate out misinformation on its platform, Facebook has faced rising criticism.
And in response just shortly after Donald Trump became US president, it launched a fact-checking programme in 2016.
Facebook said in a blog post that it had removed 265 social media accounts that originated in Israel and focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, along with “some activity” in Latin America and South East Asia.
“The people behind this network used fake accounts to run pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement.
“They also represented themselves as locals, including local news organisations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, wrote in the post.
Some of the activity was linked to Israeli company Archimedes Group, an investigation found and Mr Gleicher said.
He added, “This organisation and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter.”
Facebook said that the people behind the phantom accounts spent a whopping sum of $812,000 (£634,941) for ads between December 2012 and April 2019, and these were paid for in Brazilian reais, Israeli shekel and US dollars.
And five of the six African countries that were targeted have had elections since 2016, and Tunisia will hold national polls later this year.
Facebook has faced increasing criticism for failing to eradicate misinformation that could affect the way people vote in elections.