{"id":5239,"date":"2017-05-08T18:31:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T18:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-culls-tens-of-thousands-of-fake-accounts-ahead-of-uk-election-2.html"},"modified":"2017-05-08T18:31:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T18:31:53","slug":"facebook-culls-tens-of-thousands-of-fake-accounts-ahead-of-uk-election-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-culls-tens-of-thousands-of-fake-accounts-ahead-of-uk-election-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook culls \u2018tens of thousands\u2019 of fake accounts ahead of UK election"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Facebook has revealed that it has purged \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of fake accounts in the U.K. ahead of a general\u00a0election next month.<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a> reported this non-specific figure earlier today, with Facebook also\u00a0saying it is monitoring the repeated posting of the same content or a sharp increase in messaging and flagging accounts displaying such\u00a0activity.<\/p>\n

Providing more detail on\u00a0these measures, Facebook told us: \u201cThese changes help us detect fake accounts on our service more effectively \u2014 including ones that are hard to spot. We\u2019ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity \u2014 without assessing the content itself. For example, our systems may detect repeated posting of the same content, or an increase in messages sent. With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook has previously been accused of liberal bias by\u00a0demoting conservative views<\/a>\u00a0in its Trending Topics feature \u2014 which likely explains why it\u2019s so keen to specify that\u00a0systems it\u2019s built to\u00a0try to\u00a0suppress the spread of certain types of \u201cinauthentic\u201d content do not assess \u201cthe content itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another fake news-related\u00a0tweak Facebook says it has brought to the U.K. to try to combat the spread of misinformation\u00a0is to take note of whether people share an article they\u2019ve read \u2014 with its\u00a0rational being that if a lot of people don\u2019t share something they\u2019ve read it\u00a0might be because the information is\u00a0misleading.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always looking to improve News Feed by listening to what the community is telling us. We\u2019ve found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way.\u00a0In December<\/a>, we started to test incorporating this signal into ranking, specifically for articles that are outliers, where people who read the article are significantly less likely to share it. We\u2019re now expanding the test to the UK,\u201d Facebook said on this.<\/p>\n

The company\u00a0has also taken out adverts in U.K. national newspapers displaying\u00a0tips to help people spot fake news \u2014 having taken\u00a0similar steps in France last month<\/a> prior to its presidential election.<\/p>\n

In a statement about its approach to tackling fake news in the U.K., Facebook\u2019s\u00a0director of policy for the country, Simon Milner, claimed the company\u00a0is \u201cdoing everything we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want to see accurate information on Facebook and so do we. That is why we are doing everything we can to tackle the problem of false news,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have developed new ways to identify and remove fake accounts that might be spreading false news so that we get to the root of the problem. To help people spot false news we are showing tips to everyone on Facebook on how to identify if something they see is false. We can\u2019t solve this problem alone so we are supporting third party fact checkers during the election in their work with news organisations, so they can independently assess facts and stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fakebook?<\/h2>\n

A spokesperson told us that Facebook\u2019s \u201chow to spot\u201d fake news ads (pictured below) are running in U.K. publications, including The Times, The Telegraph, Metro and The Guardian.<\/p>\n

Tips the company\u00a0is promoting include being skeptical of headlines; checking URLs to view\u00a0the source of the information; asking\u00a0whether photos look like they have been manipulated; and cross-referencing\u00a0with other news sources to try to verify whether a\u00a0report has multiple sources publishing it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook does not appear to be running these ads in U.K. newspapers with the largest readerships, such as The Sun and The Daily Mail, which suggests the exercise is mostly\u00a0a PR drive by\u00a0the company to try to be seen to be taking some very\u00a0public steps to\u00a0fight the fake news political hot potato.<\/p>\n

The political temperature on this issue is not letting up for Facebook.\u00a0Last month<\/a>, for example,\u00a0a U.K. parliamentary committee said the\u00a0company must\u00a0do more to combat fake news \u2014 criticizing it\u00a0for not responding fast enough to complaints.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can spot quite quickly when something goes viral. They should then be able to check whether that story is true or not and, if it is fake, blocking it or alerting people to the fact that it is disputed. It can\u2019t just be users referring the validity of the story. They have to make a judgment about whether a story is fake or not,\u201d argued\u00a0select committee chairman Damian Collins.<\/p>\n

Facebook has also\u00a0been under growing pressure\u00a0in the U.K.<\/a>\u00a0for not swiftly handling complaints about the spread of hate speech, extremist and illegal content on its platform\u00a0\u2014 and\u00a0earlier this month<\/a>\u00a0another parliamentary committee urged\u00a0the government to consider\u00a0imposing fines on it and other major social platforms for content moderation failures in a bid to\u00a0impose better moderation standards.<\/p>\n

Add to that Facebook\u2019s specific role in influencing the\u00a0elections, which again will be facing scrutiny later today when the BBC\u2019s Panorama program screens an investigation<\/a>\u00a0of how content spread via Facebook\u00a0during\u00a0the U.S. election and the U.K.\u2019s Brexit referendum\u00a0\u2014 including considering how much money the social networking giant makes from fake news.<\/p>\n

The BBC is already teasing\u00a0this spectacularly awkward clip<\/a> of Milner being interviewed for the program, where he is repeatedly asked how much money the company makes from fake news \u2014 and repeatedly fails to provide a specific answer.<\/p>\n

Facebook declined to respond on this when we asked for comment on the program\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

Safe to say, there are some very awkward questions for Facebook here (as there has been for Google too, recently, relating to ads being served alongside extremist content on YouTube<\/a>). And while Milner says the company aspires to reduce \u201cto zero\u201d the money it makes from fake news, it\u2019s clearly not yet\u00a0in a position to say it\u00a0does not\u00a0financially benefit from the spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s also true\u00a0that some traditional media outlets have or can\u00a0benefit from spreading falsity \u2014 earlier this year, for example, The Daily Mail was\u00a0itself effectively branded a source of fake news<\/a> by Wikipedia editors who voted to exclude it as a source for the website on the grounds that the information it contains is \u201cgenerally unreliable\u201d \u2014 the\u00a0issue with Facebook goes beyond having an individually skewed\u00a0editorial agenda. It\u2019s about a massively scalable distribution technology whose core\u00a0philosophy is to\u00a0operate without any preemptive editorial checks and balances at all.<\/p>\n

The point is, Facebook\u2019s\u00a0staggering size, combined with the algorithmic hierarchy\u00a0of its News Feed, which\u00a0can\u00a0create feedback loops of\u00a0popularity, means its product\u00a0can act as an\u00a0amplification platform for fake news. And for all The Daily Mail\u2019s evident divisiveness, it\u00a0does not control\u00a0a global distribution platform that\u2019s pushing close to two billion active users.<\/p>\n

So, really, it\u2019s Facebook\u2019s unprecedented reach and power that is\u00a0the core of\u00a0the issue here when you\u2019re considering whether technology might be undermining democracy.<\/p>\n

No other media outlet has ever come close to such scale. And that\u2019s\u00a0why this issue\u00a0is intrinsically bound up with\u00a0Facebook \u2014 because\u00a0it\u00a0foregrounds the vast power the platform wields, and the commensurate lack of regulation in how it applies\u00a0that power.<\/p>\n

Ads in national newspapers are therefore really best viewed as Facebook trying to influence politicians, as lawmakers wake up to the\u00a0power of Facebook. So maybe there should be an eleventh tip in Facebook\u2019s false news advert: Consider the underlying agenda.<\/p>\n

In the U.K., Facebook says that it is working with local third-party fact-checking organization\u00a0Full Fact<\/a>, and with the Google News Lab-backed First Draft<\/a>\u00a0organization, to work with \u201cmajor newsrooms to address rumors and misinformation spreading online during the UK general election\u201d \u2014 echoing the approach\u00a0it announced in Germany in January<\/a>, ahead of German elections this\u00a0September\u2026 although the effectiveness of that approach has already been questioned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Facebook says full details of the U.K. initiative\u00a0will be announced \u201cin due course.\u201d The U.K.\u2019s surprise General Election \u2014 called by Prime Minister Theresa May late last month, despite her previously stated intent\u00a0not to call an election before\u00a02020 \u2014 presumably caught the company on the hop.<\/p>\n

With just one month to go until polling day in the U.K. it remains to be seen whether May\u2019s election U-turn also caught the fake political news spreaders on the hop.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: TechCrunch<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/6QuKJJNbKPI\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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