US social networking giant Facebook announced earlier in October that it was working to make its pages more transparent by showing the confirmed owners of social media accounts, labelling state-controlled media information and making it easier for users to distinguish political advertisements, APA reports citing Sputnik.
"Today, we removed three networks of accounts, pages and groups engaging in foreign interference — which is the coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign actor — on Facebook and Instagram. They originated in Russia and targeted Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya", Facebook's statement said.
The statement says the company has removed 35 Facebook accounts, 53 Pages, seven Groups and five Instagram accounts targeting African countries.
"We're constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people. We're taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behaviour, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action", Facebook said.
On 21 October, Facebook deleted Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya's English-language Arctic.ru page in an act that the agency labelled as censorship.
Facebook in September announced it had removed about 500 accounts and pages originating in Iraq and Ukraine for coordinated inauthentic behaviour; noting that account owners posted mainly about domestic political issues, US military action in Iraq and pro-Iran militias.
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