Facebook targets these accounts with strict measures

Facebook

Facebook has announced a tougher approach to dealing with groups of real personal accounts that coordinate the spread of malicious content. The social network already has rules against broadcasting harmful content such as incitement to hatred, harassment, and harmful misinformation about the emerging coronavirus. But sometimes such malicious information or data is disseminated through a perfectly organized group of personal accounts rather than through an individual.

Although Facebook's rules prohibit dangerous groups such as terrorist organizations, these rules do not include all groups that cause harm. The Facebook Network's data security team regularly takes action against fake accounts that mislead others about their purpose or identity. And now this team is taking action against groups trying to use real accounts to avoid applying rules to them and posting malicious content. These actions can reduce the access of content from these accounts to other users or cancel these real accounts, pages, or groups.

Facebook often faces accusations of not doing enough to tackle misinformation or incitement to hatred. At the same time, Facebook could find in the new effort a way to facilitate the removal of harmful content in a more decisive manner. But Facebook could face an even bigger clash with conservative and other groups that accuse it of deliberately censoring political content, charges that Facebook completely denies.

Facebook's Dave Agranovich said, "We know this challenge is complex. We need caution and awareness when dealing with the coordinated efforts of real users to distinguish between those who organically gather for legitimate social change and those who form aggressive networks that can cause digital harm to others.