Facebook trains guns on both Congress, BJP in crackdown on dodgy pages, fake news

WASHINGTON: The social media giant Facebook Inc dove headlong into the general election fracas, removing hundreds of pages that it said were engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and were linked to individuals associated with an IT Cell of the Congress Party.


At the same time, the company also removed 15 Facebook Pages, groups and accounts, some of which promoted pro-BJP material and were linked to individuals associated with an Indian IT firm Silver Touch.

Unconnected and distinct from the clean up of fake news and propaganda on the Indian side ahead of the upcoming general election, Facebook also struck at Pakistan, removing 103 digital assets run by the Pakistan military.

FB left no doubt that the clean up was related to India’s general elections and that it as responding to criticism that its platform was being used and manipulated in many electoral democracies to subvert elections.

“We identified violating accounts and Pages through ongoing internal investigations into coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the region ahead of the upcoming elections in India. We have shared relevant information with policymakers and technology platforms,” the company’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a posting on the subject.

In all, Facebook said it had removed 687 Facebook Pages and accounts linked to the Congress IT cell for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour in India.

“The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts, the majority of which had already been detected and suspended by our automated systems, and joined various Groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement on their own Pages. The Page admins and account owners typically posted about local news and political issues, including topics like the upcoming elections, candidate views, the INC and criticism of political opponents including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that it was connected to individuals associated with an INC IT Cell,” Facebook said about the Congress linked effort.

A smaller number of 15 pages that parlayed pro-BJP content were also removed, Facebook said.

The Facebook takedown included two pro-BJP pages called “The India Eye,” which had over 2 million followers and is connected to Silver Touch Technologies Ltd, which is also said to have created Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official app.

''The fact that partisans on both sides resorted to such tactics is a troubling feature. It suggests that such inauthentic behaviour may increasingly be considered a necessary part of political campaigning, with the expectation that the other side will also be conducting such activity. That, in turn, suggests that the platforms, and voters, will continue to face more challenges from more directions, as they try to distinguish between genuine and inauthentic content,'' noted Kanishk Karan and Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) who analyzed the Facebook-condemned content.

Facebook’s crackdown on what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”—euphemism for what some simply refer to as fake news – follows its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s commitment last September to ensure election integrity in various countries, including in India. The company faced a torrent of public criticism over its handling of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election while others have accused it of political bias and censorship.

Since then, the company has hired scores of executives to oversee election-related material in countries such as India,

Brazil

,

Mexico

etc in an effort to sanitize its platform of fake news and subversion.