Google LLC is cracking down on the spread of misinformation, removing 39 YouTube accounts this week that it says were run by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

In a blog post Thursday, Google said bad actors were involved in “hacking and influence campaigns.” The move came days after Facebook Inc. culled hundreds of accounts, pages and groups from its platform that it said were linked to Iran and Russia and created for the purpose of spreading fake news.

Twitter Inc. also said it culled 284 accounts that it said were involved in “coordinated manipulation.” Some accounts on both platforms were reportedly created to appear as if the owners were from the U.S., the U.K. or Canada, and many of those seemed to take a hard line on President Donald Trump.

With cybersecurity consultant FireEeye, Google released a report regarding such suspicious activity, which was not only linked to influencing the U.S. public, but people in many countries. Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said that in all, 39 Iran-linked YouTube accounts were removed, as well as six blogs on its self-publishing platform Blogger and 13 Google Plus accounts.

The YouTube channels generated few views, according to Google, only 13,466 U.S. views in all. Walker said there was not much he could say at the moment because Google was working with law enforcement. He did say that the operation has been ongoing since 2017.

The company added that IRIB was involved in phishing attempts, although Gmail has been successful in detecting most of them. Google has issued a warning to anyone at risk, stating that “government-backed attackers” come from many countries. If you see the warning, Google recommends taking immediate action.

“In recent months, we’ve detected and blocked attempts by state-sponsored actors in various countries to target political campaigns, journalists, activists, and academics located around the world,” said Walker. “When we’ve seen these types of attacks, we’ve notified users as well as law enforcement.”

Google has also removed 42 YouTube channels, which had 58 English-language political videos that were thought to come from Russia’s Internet Research Agency. The videos only had 1,800 views in all.

Image: GuillermoJM via Flickr