This whole collusion thing is going to a really strange place.

Social media companies have been pressured into taking down organized false front campaigns. And this one is a doozy.

This morning we removed 82 Pages, Groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people in the US and UK. The Page administrators and account owners typically represented themselves as US citizens, or in a few cases UK citizens — and they posted about politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration. Despite attempts to hide their true identities, a manual review of these accounts linked their activity to Iran. We also identified some overlap with the Iranian accounts and Pages we removed in August.

The campaign examples listed by Facebook pushed Black Lives Matter messages (the Russians also viewed BLM as a useful Trojan horse movement and set up their own face BLM hub) and opposition to the Muslim travel ban.

There’s also plenty of Trump bashing. Including one that features Mueller, Putin and Trump.

“Mueller just exposed a secret $10 million bribe from Putin’s right hand to top Trump campaign official. Trump should not be able to nominate until the investigation has concluded. Share if you agree.”

So we’ve got an enemy regime, allied with the left, engaging in exactly the behavior that had the media all worked up with the Russians did it. Iran is using fake news to accuse Trump of collusion with Russia. And the media will cover it much more lightly.

These are not the bots they’re looking for.