Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it has removed a total of 783 pages tied to Iran that were engaging in inauthentic behavior.

“This activity was directed from Iran, in some cases repurposing Iranian state media content, and engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting people across the world, although more heavily in the Middle East and South Asia,” the company said in a blog post.

Facebook went on to say that these localized pages, groups and accounts targeted a slew of countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and South Asia. The modus operandi was for impostors to pretend to be locals and spread information on current events using both the Facebook platform and Instagram.

“This included commentary that repurposed Iranian state media’s reporting on topics like Israel-Palestine relations and the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, including the role of the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia,” said Facebook, adding that some of the activity went as far back as 2010.

The Facebook accounts gained as many as 2 million followers, while the Instagram accounts had about 254,000 followers. In total, the accounts on both platforms had spent some $30,000 on advertising.

Facebook provided screenshots of posts that allegedly came from these accounts, that included pro-Russia propaganda and a fair amount of anti-Israel sentiment. In one particular post, the supposed Iranian account called Israel a “war criminal.” The posts, all in line with Iran’s international stance, came in multiple languages.

Also on Thursday, Twitter Inc. said it had removed thousand of “malicious” accounts whose origin was Russia, Iran and Venezuela. Although the accounts had “limited operations,” Twitter said they were designed to influence the U.S. midterm elections last November. Twitter said it managed to take down the majority of those accounts before election day.

Twitter said it had removed 764 accounts coming from Venezuela. “These accounts are another example of a foreign campaign of spammy content focused on divisive political themes, and the behavior we uncovered is similar to that utilized by potential Russian IRA accounts,” said the company.

An additional 1,196 Venezuelan accounts were removed for engaging in a “state-backed influence campaign” designed to target a domestic audience.

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