How Facebook cracks down on fake accounts
The social networking site monitors and takes action on unusual behaviour.
Social networking sites can use machine learning to crack down on fake accounts and uncover coordinated behavior in efforts to prevent the spread of false news to communities, a Facebook representative said.
Nashwa Aly, Head of Public Policy of Facebook in MENP, said Facebook is investing in human reviewers and machine learning to shut down fake accounts that try to amplify false news, seed stories with journalists or disrupt voices from discussion. The social networking site also disrupts economic incentives of spammers who make money by masquerading as legitimate news publishers.
"Bad actors often use automated bots or large teams of people. To protect against fake account creation, we detect abuse using automated processes," said Aly.
She was speaking during the second day of the Arab Media Forum in a session titled "The creation of fabrication."
She said that in an era where fake news is highly confused with real news, the social networking site monitors and takes action on unusual behaviour. Spammers who post hoaxes to get visits to their sites are also being disrupted from such actions.
"To stop the spread of false news, we work to prevent spammers from buying ads and downrank posts and ads that link to lowquality webpages," said Aly.
Aly emphasised that social media networks must empower and educate communities to identify and report false news. "To build an informed community, we must stop bad actors from using our services," she said.
She stressed on working with decision makers, journalists, academics and parents to explore ways to build a generation of critical thinkers and uncover false news created out of ill intentions.
The Facebook News Feed, Aly said, as currently designed also downranks inauthentic posts through the scrolling list that prioritizes posts, videos and articles that appear to users. She added that hundreds of different signals are used to determine the posts relevant to users.
"We look at who posted it whether its friends, families or news sources, interactions with the post and the type of content." Aly added, "Based on a variety of signals, false news will have a difficult time getting widespread distribution through Facebook."
The fight against fake news, she said, comes with education and empowerment. The Arab Media Forum concluded on Wednesday after gathering over 2500 prominent regional and international media figures and leaders who addressed media responsibilities in an ever-changing digital era under the theme "Impactful Media Trends."
I urge you all to pay close attention to the media and the warnings and advice that will be given in the coming days. Voreqe Bainimarama Prime Minister