Meta, the social media giant formerly known as Facebook, banned seven surveillance firms from Facebook on Thursday after an investigation was completed into the growing practice of “surveillance for hire” on the company’s flagship social media site.

Meta’s investigation revealed that the surveillance companies could provide detailed data on Facebook users, allowing clients to “indiscriminately” target users with tailor-made messages – potentially leading to their devices being compromised.

An estimated 48,000 Facebook users who interacted with the seven firms, and could have been targeted by their malicious activities, have been sent warning notices. 

One of the highest-profile companies in the ban is Black Cube, an Israeli firm notorious for assisting in disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s defense. Black Cube allegedly smeared women who had accused him of sexual assault. Another prominent company was Cytrox, a North Macedonian company allegedly responsible for infecting users with malware.

Meta’s move comes as the company has faced increasing pressure from regulators in Washington, spurred by the recent testimony of a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, that the company intentionally neglected to address disinformation on the site out of fear of losing revenue.

Although “cyber mercenary” groups have argued in the past that they primarily operate against criminals and terror groups, Meta executives noted in the investigation that some had been hired by authoritarian governments to target critics who used social media.

Meta’s report comes only weeks after the Biden administration officially sanctioned the NSO Group, a different Israeli company responsible for the Pegasus spyware that infected the phones of human rights activists and even U.S. diplomats. While the NSO Group has claimed that it does business with states to track criminals and terror threats, it has been accused of turning a blind eye towards the software’s use against dissidents.

The NSO Group continues to operate a Facebook page, although Meta argued that it was part of the “cyber mercenary ecosystem.”

At the same time that Facebook’s investigation was announced, a University of Toronto team uncovered another spyware company, Cytrox, which had been used to hack activists’ phones in the Middle East. The team found that Cytrox’s Predator software had been purchased and used by, among other customers, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two broadly authoritarian Middle East states which have dealt harshly with dissidents in the past.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.