Facebook deletes Iran-linked pages over effort to sow discord among US voters

Dozens of accounts posting politically charged content reached more than a million users, company says

Facebook has uncovered and deleted dozens of accounts and pages originating in Iran that were intended to provoke division in the US and the UK.

The accounts, which posed as US and UK residents, posted frequently about politically divisive subjects, including race relations, opposition to Donald Trump, and immigration. More than a million Facebook users had engaged with the 82 pages, groups and accounts that were identified, most of them in the US, and Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said they were created to deliberately "sow discord".