Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Explained

Nathaniel Gleicher

In brief

Meta's official explanation of "coordinated inauthentic behavior" (CIB) — a term the platform uses to describe networks of accounts and pages that deliberately obscure their identities or coordinated purpose. Distinct from isolated false claims, CIB involves organized, collective activity designed to manipulate public discourse through deception. Meta presents this definition as context for removal campaigns launched throughout 2018 targeting foreign and domestic inauthentic networks.

Key claims

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior" combines two dimensions: coordination (organized collective action) and inauthenticity (deliberate misrepresentation of identity, motivation, or affiliation).
Distinct from "fake news": CIB is not merely about false claims, but about who is making the claims and whether they are being honest about who they are and what they stand for.
Recent enforcement activity: Meta had removed multiple networks throughout 2018 for violating policies against coordinated inauthentic behavior, including foreign actors and domestic spam networks.
Temporal pattern: A series of removal announcements from July–November 2018 demonstrates increasing proactive enforcement against CIB across Facebook and Instagram.

Platform removals cited

The article references five major removal announcements:

July 31, 2018 — 32 Pages and accounts removed for spam and coordinated behavior
August 21, 2018 — Multiple Pages, groups, and accounts on Facebook and Instagram
August 28, 2018 — 20 Burmese individuals and organizations (Myanmar military officials)
October 11, 2018 — 559 Pages and 251 accounts for spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior
November 13, 2018 — Continued proactive removal of inauthentic behavior from foreign actors

Significance

This is Meta's foundational public definition of coordinated inauthentic behavior, a term that became central to platform policy discourse and academic research on computational propaganda. The article's distinction between false content and coordinated networks that obscure their purpose shaped how platforms, researchers, and policymakers conceptualize information manipulation at scale. Gleicher's role as Head of Cybersecurity Policy positions this as an authoritative statement of Meta's operational understanding and enforcement priorities in the 2018–2019 period.

Notes

This article represents a primary source on how Meta (then Facebook) understood and publicly framed coordinated inauthentic behavior in 2018, before the company's major policy and terminology shifts in the early 2020s. The emphasis on foreign actors (Myanmar military, Russian actors in other announcements) reflects heightened attention to state-sponsored manipulation in the post-2016 election period. The distinction Gleicher draws between false content and coordinated networks remains analytically important: researchers studying CIB often focus on the coordinated structure and network properties regardless of whether the underlying content is true or false, which represents a methodological departure from earlier "fake news" literature that conflated the two dimensions.