Facebook Takes Down Fake Account Network Used To Spread Hate In UK (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Facebook has removed a network of more than 100 accounts and pages for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on its social networks -- the first time it has done so for UK-based operations seeking to influence British citizens. The operation was spread over Facebook and Instagram and used a network of fake accounts to pose as both far-right activists and their opponents. It ran pages and groups whose names frequently changed in order to drum up more followers and operated fake accounts to engage in hate speech and spread divisive comments on both sides of UK political debate, Facebook says.

The pages, with names like "Anti Far Right Extremists", "Atheists Research Centre", and "Politicalized", attracted about 175,000 followers on Facebook, and a further 4,500 on Instagram, according to the company's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. The pages shared content from mainstream news sources, such as the BBC and the New York Times, but also shared original content, even including administrators actively engaging in debate with users. "We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people," Gleicher said. "We're taking down these pages and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.

Comments

How Many More to Go

[rtb61]

Facebook deletes 100 accounts, only 999,999,900 to go or thereabouts. I'll bet there is an internal rating system for this, approved fake accounts and unapproved fake accounts, you pay, you can have all the fake accounts you want, you don't pay and they might eventually kick you off.

Re:How Many More to Go

[AmiMoJo]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway?

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

There are no transparent, open and reasonable criteria from Facebook on what various transgressions constitute "policy violation", they are all arbitrary and whimsical and depend heavily on third party reporting.

Indeed, and Facebook makes very minimal effort to even follow up reports from third parties.

Re:How Many More to Go

[The1stImmortal]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway?

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

Or a PR/marketing firm in New York or London or LA. Hell, most web marketing firms do this. Not to mention personal PR, business marketing agencies, ad companies propping up their own stats for clients, and of course political marketing people. It's basically par for the course. Common practice. I'd not be surprised if there were more such accounts than real humans on FB. Twitter certainly seems that way.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

Ah, we're back at the "Russian trolls" excuse. I recall a few months ago Twitter banned a bunch of Bulgarian accounts for the sole reason that they wrote in Cyrillic alphabet, were from the capital city of Bulgaria and were active roughly during the daytime over there, thereby fulfilling all your criteria.

The irony was most of those blocked were the exact opposite of a troll farm - they were genuine accounts and of people who were mostly pro-western and quite liberal at that.

It is impossible to ascertain any of the things you propose with any certainty just by the online activity of an account, especially in the absence of clear policies.

Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[rsilvergun]

with the Atheists? It's bizarre, because you'd think the last folks who would be buddy buddy with the right are the Atheists, what with the right usually getting in bed with Evangelicals. Not that there aren't plenty of left wing Atheists (Aronra comes to mind. And Genetic Skeptic) but still.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[bestweasel]

It is bizarre because atheism is mainstream and popular in the UK and evangelicals and religion in general have little influence. If this is Putin's mob trying to stir up enmity again, then they might have been wasting their time.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

Really? Thanks for defining what I believe. I honestly didn't know I do believe that.

Atheism means exactly one thing, and one thing only: Not believing in deities. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, that means that you are not required to "believe" in the Big Bang Theory to be an atheist (or watch the show for that matter). And it doesn't keep you from thinking the universe was created by aliens from planet Zrbit outside our universe.

In other words, just because you're atheist doesn't mean you're rational. You just have a chance to be rational.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[dunkelfalke]

Exactly. And given that the "European Research Group" is staunchly anti-European, it is probably just as likely that the "Atheists Research Centre" is an organisation for religious nutjobs.

Re:Better Headline Facebook Censors Speech

[meglon]

The groups were designed to look like sides.... both right and left.... being at odds with each other. The people behind the groups... which is what is important... were neither, they were simply trying to sow discord by controlling groups purporting to be from both sides.