Facebook takes down Pakistan military backed pages targeting India ahead of LS polls
ISI personnel used fake accounts to operate Military fan pages, Kashmir community pages, Facebook said.
ET Bureau|
Apr 01, 2019, 02.32 PM IST
BENGALURU: Ten days before the first phase of polling for the 2019 general elections, Facebook on Monday announced that it has removed and taken down multiple pages, groups and accounts for violating the company’s policies on co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour or spam, including 103 such accounts on Facebook and Instagram, that originated in Pakistan. These accounts, Facebook added, were linked to individuals working for ISPR - the publicity division of Pakistan’s military establishment, or the ..
The individuals from Pakistan’s military establishment, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher added, used fake accounts to operate “Military fan pages”, “general Pakistani interest Pages”, “Kashmir community pages”, and hobby and news pages. “They frequently posted about local and political news including topics like the Indian government, political leaders and military,” he said. While those behind these pages and accounts attempted to conceal their identities, Facebook sa ..
A majority of these violations happened last month when India and Pakistan exchanged hostilities following the Jaish-e-Mohammad sponsored Pulwama attack that killed 44 jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force. The Pakistan-based pages indulging in this behaviour included “Halka Phulka”, “Kashmir for Kashmiris”, “Pakistan Army — The Best”, and a page named “Painter’s Palette”, which ran a piece of content relating to Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was briefly in Pakistan custody.
Facebook said that this take down included 24 pages, 57 individual accounts, 7 groups and 15 Instagram accounts. It added that about 2.8 million accounts followed “one or more of these Pages”, while about 4,700 accounts “joined one of these groups”, and around 1,050 users followed “one or more of these Instagram accounts.” These accounts and pages, Facebook said, had spent $1,100 on ads on its platform, paid for in US dollars and Pakistani rupees
Gleicher also revealed that Facebook had taken down nearly 687 pages and accounts linked to the social media department or IT Cell of the Indian National Congress, the leading opposition party in India. He added that these accounts were removed and taken down, for creating a network of fake accounts, and importantly, concealing their identity, detected by the company’s automated systems.
The violating behaviour, in this case, was “joining various Groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement on their own Pages.” Gleicher further said they were working to create a large number of fake accounts that would appear to be independent, go into Facebook groups, and deliver messages that people would treat differently if they knew that these were coming from political parties. He added, “The page admins and account owners typically posted about local news and political issu ..
The crackdown on the Congress IT Cell, Facebook said, included 138 pages, and 549 individual accounts, with one or more pages being followed by about 206,000 users. These accounts and pages also spent around $39,000 for advertising on Facebook, paid for in Indian rupees. According to Facebook’s investigation, the first ad ran in August 2014, with the most recent ad running in March 2019. Among the pages taken down by Facebook includes “Jo Feku”, “Baba Brashtachari” (in Hindi), and a page called ..
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