Around 170,000 people followed at least one of the pages linked to an Indonesian group accused of spreading hate speech and fake news (AFP Photo/LOIC VENANCE) |
Facebook has shut down hundreds of accounts and pages linked to an Indonesian group accused of spreading hate speech and fake news, the company said Friday.
The world's
biggest social network said cyber group Saracen engaged in "coordinated
abuse of the platform" by operating a network of hoax accounts that
mislead online readers about who was behind them.
"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's head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a statement.
Saracen
gained infamy in Indonesia two years ago when police accused it of deliberately
spreading untruths via social media.
At least
one of its members was jailed following a wide-ranging investigation.
Indonesia
is battling its own wave of online hate speech, as conservative groups exploit
social media to spread lies and target minorities.
Authorities
are worried inflammatory material posted online could crack open social and
religious fault lines in the world's largest Muslim-majority country ahead of
presidential elections in April.
Some 800
Saracen-linked accounts, 207 pages, 546 groups and 208 Instagram accounts
linked to the group have been yanked from the network, Gleicher said.
About
170,000 people followed at least one of the pages, and more than 65,000
followed at least one of the Instagram accounts.
The groups
and accounts were shut down "based on their behaviour, not the content
they were posting", Gleicher said.
Facebook
has moved to stamp out efforts by state actors and others to manipulate the
social network using fraudulent accounts.
The US firm
began looking into these kinds of activities after revelations of Russian
influence campaigns during the 2016 US election, aimed at sowing discord.
"We
are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we
don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people," Gleicher said.
Facebook
has a fact-checking partnership with AFP in multiple countries.
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