Tag: Spamming

The action has drawn criticism from some accounts that said they were legitimate activists. Big audience Facebook said it had removed networks of pages created by fake accounts. It also removed accounts with the same name. The same people running these "inauthentic" pages also posted "clickbait" messages to many Facebook groups to drum up traffic, it said. "This artificially inflates engagement for their inauthentic pages and the posts they share, misleading people about their popularity and improving their ranking in News Feed," said the blog. Before now, Facebook had struggled to pick out these pages and accounts because the posts and information they shared were similar to those seen on legitimate political sites. Instead of analysing content, Facebook looked at the behaviour of the pages to see which ones used fake accounts and posted spam. The Washington Post said some of the accounts that had been removed had been present on Facebook for years and were followed by millions of people. I don't have a fake news website," he told the Washington Post. Gathering data about users in this way broke Facebook's terms and led to the shut down, it told Reuters.

Facebook has removed more than 800 pages and accounts that sought to profit from politically themed spam. In a blog, Facebook said the 559 pages and 251 accounts abused the network to try to make people visit sites that make money from adverts. The same people running these "inauthentic" pages also posted "clickbait" messages to many Facebook groups to drum up traffic, it said. Before now, Facebook had struggled to pick out these pages and accounts because the posts and information they shared were similar to those seen on legitimate political sites. Gathering data about users in this way broke Facebook's terms and led to the shut down, it told Reuters. "People are getting a bit of screen fatigue," he tells us, believing that we are looking for something that makes our TVs, tablets and phones talk to each other better rather than adding yet another screen. Similar questions about privacy and usability hovered over the week's other hardware launch. Fresh from shutting down its social network Google+ after discovering a security vulnerability, the search giant unveiled its latest Pixel smartphones and the Google Home hub. This takes the Google Home smart speaker and gives it a screen but, unlike Facebook's Portal, no camera. Perhaps more important to Google as a vehicle to show off its Android platform is the latest version of its Pixel smartphone.