Facebook takes down hate speech fake Instagram accounts

LONDON: Facebook Inc said yesterday it had removed 137 fake pages, groups and Instagram accounts in the United Kingdom and a further 31 in Romania for engaging in hate speech and making divisive comments.

Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc have been under pressure from regulators around the globe to fight the spread of misinformation aimed at destabilising elections by stoking hardline positions or supporting propaganda campaigns.

Facebook also said it would crack down on misinformation about vaccines, by reducing its distribution and providing users with more authoritative information on the topic.

The company said it would reduce the ranking of groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations in its News Feed and Search features and would also reject ads

spreading such information.

Earlier yesterday, Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook’s cybersecurity policy, wrote in a blog post that the individuals behind the fake pages, groups and accounts represented them

selves as farright and antifarright activists in the UK.

Some of the most popular pages that were taken down defended the role of migrants and Muslims in Britain, and highlighted hostile content

related to Tommy Robinson, the former leader of farright extremist group English Defence League, according to a blog by Digital Forensic Research (DFR) Lab.

DFR, a small online forensics

team of Washingtonbased Atlantic Council thinktank, has been working with Facebook to enhance the social network’s investigations of foreign interference.

Last month, Facebook removed hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups from its network after discovering they were linked to an online group accused of spreading hate speech and fake news.

Facebook said yesterday the people behind the fake accounts frequently posted about local and political news including topics such as immigration, free speech, racism, LGBT issues, farright politics, issues between India and Pakistan, and religious beliefs including Islam and Christianity.

About 175,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages, and around 4500 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.

In Romania, the page admins and account owners typically posted about political issues, including partisan news under fictitious bylines in support of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Gleicher said. — Reuters