Facebook suspends 30,000 fake accounts in France

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook Inc said on Thursday, April 13 it suspended 30,000 accounts in France as the social network giant steps up efforts to stop the spread of fake news, misinformation and spam, Reuters reveals.

The move, which comes 10 days before the first round of a hotly contested French presidential election, is among the most aggressive yet by Facebook to move against accounts that violate its terms of service, rather than simply respond to complaints.

Facebook is under intense pressure in Europe as governments across the continent threaten new laws and fines unless the company moves quickly to remove extremist propaganda or other content that violates local laws.

The pressure on social media sites including Twitter, Google's YouTube and Facebook has intensified in the run-up to the elections in France and Germany.

Facebook already has a program in France to use outside fact-checkers to combat fake news in users' feeds.

Also on Thursday, Facebook took out full-page ads in Germany's best-selling newspapers to educate readers on how to spot fake news.

In a blog post, Facebook said it was acting against 30,000 fake accounts in France. It said its priority was to remove suspect accounts with high volumes of posting activity and the biggest audiences.

Two people familiar with Facebook's process said the company had strengthened its formula for detecting deceptive accounts being run by automated means. As an example, the new process considers accounts that have smaller circles of friends and that therefore had been less of a priority previously.

The company is using automated pattern-recognition to identify repeated posting of the same content and increases in messaging.

Thursday's action follows other moves by Facebook to make it easier for users to report potential fraud and hoaxes.