Facebook Advances Against Fake Russo Accounts
In the past months, Facebook has made a vibrant appearance on technology news as it strengthened effort towards curbing the spread of fake news.
The social media app took down a significant number of fake accounts and pages believed to be tied to Internet Research Agency also known as “Trolls from Olgino,” an internet troll farm based in Russia.
It removed 13 misleading identity accounts and two pages today. One of the two pages has roughly 14,000 followers, signifying the extent of its influence on the internet.
The other page, titled PeaceData has a much smaller following at only 200 people. Yet, it described itself as a global news organization to lure people into believing its content’s authenticity.
The pages are no longer on the social network. Similarly, Twitter said that it suspended five accounts tied to the PeaceData, and its LinkedIn accounts are no longer available. However, the website remains live.
The pages, according to reports, hire freelance journalists to write stories for their respective websites.
For the PeaceData alone, it leverages the power of modern technology to publish more than 500 articles in English. They also publish an additional 200 in Arabic for the February to August period.
The pages targets English-speaking geographical locations, namely the UK, the US, Algeria, and Egypt.
Experts said that the Russian “agency” uses artificial intelligence to generate profile pictures of fake users for the first time. The network mainly targets left-wing users on politically motivated topics.
Among the English-posted content includes frequent news stories about the United States’ incumbent president, Donald Trump.
Although, this year’s main target is the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Some involve “conspiracy theories” involving political figures.
US Elections Coming, Is Facebook Doing Enough?
Back in the election period in 2016, Russia’s Internet Research Agency used fake accounts to express disdain against Americans.
Now that the November 3 election nears, Russo trolls once again emerge back stronger, leveraging new technology.
The felony in 2016 sparked worries on whether the leading technology firm is doing enough action to safeguard US elections.
Fortunately, the fake pages were still in the early stages when the FBI tipped them off to the California-based social media app.
Facebook’s head on cybersecurity policy noted that while many bad actors are still doing nothing to crack down the fake accounts, the largest social networking site’s move will limit their reach.
To date, Facebook has already removed a total of 450 fake accounts situated in India and Pakistan.
Similarly, it took down another 130 FB and Instagram accounts combined from North and South America, mainly from Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia.
On the other side of the world, Australia is working on a new regulation that will oblige Facebook to pay media outlets to use news content.
The social media platform released a warning for its Australian users, citing the possibility of stopping the sharing of local and international news in its interface should the government go ahead with its plan.
