Facebook purges pages for ‘coordinated’ fake behaviour

Facebook purges pages for ‘coordinated’ fake behaviour

1. Facebook has announced that it has removed over 700 pages, groups and accounts from India. The accounts taken down includes those which are associated with different political parties.
2. Facebook said it has removed these accounts after detecting coordinated inauthentic behaviour ahead of the upcoming elections in India. It removed these pages in four separate takedowns because of their desire to deceive users about their identity not because of their content.
3. Earlier, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter had adopted a voluntary code of ethics for the upcoming general elections. The code was prepared by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
4. The code of ethics includes (a) reporting mechanism to deal with complaints (b) facilitating transparency in paid political advertisements (c) expedite the process and take action on paid political advertisements (d) abiding by pre-certification by the Media Certification & Monitoring Committee (MCMC) of Election Commission on advertisements and (e) updating EC on the measures taken by them to prevent abuse of their respective platforms.
5. This code also establishes high-priority communication channel between the nodal officers designated by the ECI and Social media platforms. The nodal officers will report the violations to Social media platforms. These complaints will be processed within 3 hours of violations reported.