Facebook purged over 800 accounts and pages pushing political messages for profit

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post



By Elizabeth Dwoskin and

Tony Romm October 11 at 2:00 PM

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Thursday that it has purged more than 800 U.S publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically oriented content that violated the company’s spam policies, a move that could reignite accusations of political censorship.

The accounts and pages, with names such as Reasonable People Unite and Reverb Press, were probably domestic actors using clickbait headlines and other spammy tactics to drive users to websites where they could target them with ads, the company said. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers and expressed a range of political viewpoints, including a page that billed itself as “the first publication to endorse President Donald J. Trump.” They did not appear to have ties to Russia, company officials said.

Facebook said it was not removing the publishers and accounts because of the type of content they posted, but because of the behaviors they engaged in, including spamming Facebook groups with identical pieces of content and using fake profiles.

“Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a blog post. “People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-purged-over-accounts-pages-pushing-political-messages-profit/

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Made and Distributed in the U.S.A.: Online Disinformation


A screenshot of Right Wing News’s Facebook page.

By Sheera Frenkel
Oct. 11, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — When Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress last month about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault, an online news site called Right Wing News sprang into action on Facebook.

The conservative site, run by the blogger John Hawkins, had created a series of new Facebook pages and accounts over the last year under many different names, according to Facebook.

After Dr. Blasey testified, Right Wing News posted several false stories about her — including the suggestion that her lawyers were being bribed by Democrats — and then used the network of Facebook pages and accounts to share the pieces so that they proliferated online quickly, social media researchers said.

The result was a real-time spreading of disinformation started by Americans, for Americans.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online-disinformation.html

[redstatebluegirl]

1. Not enough! I have reported over 100 fake accounts and they let them all stay.

Every one has a fake name (obvious), and no friends, they spew hate everywhere but they leave them alone.

[turbinetree]

2. Maybe Facebook should go over and ask the "Weekly Standard" how they treated Ian Milhiser

because after all the "fucking libertarian right wing Weekly Standard " is just a upstanding source of information and facts and did this to a senior law reporter at "THINK PROGRESS".......................because the weekly standard is the chief censor for Facebook....................go fucking figure..........................I hate facebook.....................fuck you facebook


https://thinkprogress.org/facebook-weekly-standard-fact-check-thinkprogress-6176df1d5749/

[Chakaconcarne]

3. Political messaging has made Facebook a cesspool.

Sure it's united many, but likely turned off more.

[kimbutgar]

4. Still not going back on Facebook.

Ran into a friend who told me she missed my posts but I told her I didn’t need to get my blood pressure up seeing the bs during election season or getting trolled by Russian bots.