Social media giant Facebook announced on April 12 that it has started removing bogus profiles on its website by studying suspicious behavior.
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What do they consider strange? Facebook said fake accounts often send torrents of messages or write repetitive posts. This latest security feature is a part of the social media company’s effort to weed out misinformation and fake news on the social media site by making sure that Facebook users are who they claim to be.
According to Shabnam Shaik of the Facebook protect and care team, real people tend to act responsibly on social media, unlike fake accounts that are often associated with the development and spread of spam.
Suspicious accounts are suspended and their owner will be required to verify their identities, which scammers and fake profiles rarely do, Facebook added.
Shaik said the same technique has led to Facebook monitoring 30,000 accounts suspected to be bogus in France.
“We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity – without assessing the content itself,” she said.
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“With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts,” she added.
Facebook started taking action against the spread of hoaxes and fake news when it was accused of affecting the recent US elections. Earlier, they added a feature that would make it easier for Facebook users to tag fake posts and harder for fake profiles to make money from fake content.
The California-based social media company also changed the way trending topics are shown to facilitate scanning of stories to ensure that only real world events covered by several news outlets will be displayed.
According to Recode.net, Facebook is looking to hire someone to head the news products in its fight against fake news. Multiple sources that the new hire will help the company develop news products for Facebook’s media partners, such as Instant Articles, and find other ways to stop the spread of misinformation.
However, Facebook has not confirmed such development as of writing.
Sources: ( gmanetwork.com , recode.net )
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