The unrelated efforts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the latest examples of how the social media giant's reach is exploited.

Informally known as the "Cyber Peace Institute," the organization plans to act as a neutral arbiter that calls out bad behavior on the internet.

The case again highlights the challenges of mitigating state-sponsored information operations.

Twitter also announced it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media.

The plaintiffs say the company knew about the problem with "access tokens" for years and chose to protect its own employees before fixing the problem for users.

“We’re taking down these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted,” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy said.