Facebook has been under intense pressure since the 2016 presidential election for failing to detect foreign meddling on its platform. The company did not identify who was behind the latest influence campaign, but it said the activity mimicked the manipulation of social media in 2016 by the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency. Facebook also said there were connections between the latest fake accounts and pages and some that it had terminated in a previous purge of Russian fakes.

But even as Facebook moved more quickly this time to limit meddling, some said the company has become heavy-handed. The activists working on the counterprotest, which is scheduled for Aug. 10 to 12, said Facebook went too far by removing videos and messages that real people had posted. That essentially is forcing them to start over in gathering followers and building momentum to stage an effective protest, they said.