Meta announced Thursday that it has removed seven surveillance-for-hire entities from Facebook and Instagram that targeted nearly 50,000 users following a monthslong investigation. In a statement, the company said the surveillance-for-hire entities—which target people across the internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their devices and accounts—had indiscriminately gone after users in 100 countries on behalf of their clients. “These companies are part of a sprawling industry that provides intrusive software tools and surveillance services indiscriminately to any customer—regardless of who they target or the human rights abuses they might enable,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This industry ‘democratizes’ these threats, making them available to government and non-government groups that otherwise wouldn’t have these capabilities.” The surveillance providers are based in China, Israel, India, and North Macedonia, Meta said, and violated multiple Community Standards and Terms of Service. Meta has banned the surveillance entities from their services and “blocked …
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