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With major elections in the United States and Brazil in a few weeks, Facebook has purged its site of hundreds of political pages. The site announced Thursday that more than 800 accounts and pages had been removed from the site for allegedly using spam tactics to increase their reach.
Unlike a similar incident earlier this year, in which Facebook removed dozens of pages with possible links to Russian troll efforts, many pages removed on Thursday were managed nationally. The total has grown to 559 pages and 251 regular accounts. According to Facebook, accounts were removed less for their content and more for their behavior.
We are working hard to fight spam and misleading behavior on Facebook. Today, we are removing hundreds of accounts and pages for breaking our rules. Learn more: https://t.co/fQ3RsQ8KPz
– Facebook Facebook) October 11, 2018
The company has accused the page operators of using coordinated spam efforts to increase the number of likes and the traffic. The pages concerned were of a political nature, on the left and right of the spectrum. According to the Washington Post, they included "Nation in Distress" on the right and the "Reasonable People Unite" on the left.
"Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same name and had posted a huge amount of content on a network of groups and pages to drive traffic to their websites," said Facebook. "Many have used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it actually was."
Thursday's development was not well received by everyone. Some of the operators of the affected pages have accused Facebook of closing legitimate political pages for breaking arbitrary rules. In an interview with the Washington Post, Chris Metcalf, publisher of "Reasonable People Unite", called himself a "legitimate political activist" and said he did not understand Facebook's rules.
The treatment of highly political pages by Facebook has been questioned several times in 2018. The site has partnered with many other technology platforms to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, but it appears that it protects against far-right hate pages much followed earlier this year. Even with evidence to the contrary, President Donald Trump has called Facebook for allegedly silencing the right voices.
Facebook has publicly declared its goal to solve its political problem of "false information" before the big elections this fall. The Brazilians will go to the polls for the October 28 presidential election, while the Americans will vote in the mid-term congressional elections on November 6.
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