Tag: 2019 Elections

Ahead of the 2019 general elections in the country, Facebook has deleted a number of Nigerian-owned Groups, including a network of accounts and Pages from its platform for inauthentic activities.
TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Facebook had on Thursday said it purged more than 800 US publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically-oriented spam, reigniting accusations of political censorship and arbitrary decision-making.
In doing so, Facebook demonstrated its increased willingness to wade into the thorny territory of policing domestic political activity.
“One common type of spam has been posts that hawk fraudulent products like fake sunglasses or weight loss “remedies.” But a lot of the spam we see today is different.
“The people behind it create networks of Pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names. They post clickbait posts on these Pages to drive people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and seem legitimate, but are actually ad farms.
“The people behind the activity also post the same clickbait posts in dozens of Facebook Groups, often hundreds of times in a short period, to drum up traffic for their websites.
“And they often use their fake accounts to generate fake likes and shares. This artificially inflates engagement for their inauthentic Pages and the posts they share, misleading people about their popularity and improving their ranking in News Feed.
“This activity goes against what people expect on Facebook, and it violates our policies against spam. Topics like natural disasters or celebrity gossip have been popular ways to generate clickbait.
“But today, these networks increasingly use sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site.
“And like the politically motivated activity we’ve seen, the “news” stories or opinions these accounts and Pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate.
“This is why it’s so important we look at these actors’ behavior – such as whether they’re using fake accounts or repeatedly posting spam – rather than their content when deciding which of these accounts, Pages or Groups to remove,” Facebook narrated in a statement obtained by TNG.
Some of the accounts deleted by Facebook had been in existence for years, had amassed millions of followers, and Facebook said it is shutting down the accounts for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior”.
“People will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here,” the social media giant stated.
While Facebook only named five of the hundreds of pages it removed, it also deleted a popular Edo Sons and Daughters Facebook Group from the platform.
In its post, Facebook described the pages, with names like “Nation in Distress” and “Reverb Press,” as largely domestic actors using clickbait headlines and other spam tactics to drive users to websites where they could target them with ads.
The company said it was not taking issue with the nature of the content posted by the pages, but with the behaviours of the accounts, which used inappropriate tactics to artificially inflate their influence.
Facebook for years has tried to squeeze spam and clickbait from its platform because it can irritate users.
But Facebook has usually applied a softer punishment, downranking the sites in its newsfeed so fewer people see them – but not shutting them down altogether.
But ever since Russian operatives used Facebook to target American voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, the company has been on a crusade to demonstrate that its platform won’t be used to disrupt democratic process across the world.
False information peddled by foreign actors was clear-cut manipulation. But the same content, when spread by domestic actors, could be considered free speech — and a crackdown on it would be contrary to a principle social media embraces.
Facebook has long struggled with where to draw lines around domestic content. The challenge of policing domestic content is even trickier than going after foreign interference because many – including Facebook itself – question whether Facebook should be in the role of deciding what constitutes legitimate political expression to begin with.
By removing the groups entirely, Facebook is eliminating any opportunity to redeem themselves.