Social media giant Facebook Inc. has announced that it removed 103 accounts, pages, and groups as a part of its campaign against Fake news and hate speech. Those accounts were linked to Pakistani military employees.
Facebook stated that it eliminates accounts and pages from Instagram and Facebook that spread fake information about Pakistani politics and leaders, the Pakistani military and the Indian government.
"Today we removed 103 Groups, accounts, and pages for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Instagram and Facebook as part of a network which was initiated in Pakistan," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity, Facebook.
"Though the people behind this action attempted to hide their identities, our investigation found that it was related to employees of the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) of the Pakistani military."
The 57 accounts, 7 groups, and 24 pages removed on Facebook had near around 2.8 million followers, and further 15 accounts on Instagram were also removed.
The social media giant simultaneously declared that the removal of 687 accounts and pages linked to India’s opposition Congress party that had involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on Facebook as well as Instagram.
“We are removing all these accounts and pages on the basis on their behavior, and not the content they posted,” Nathaniel Gleicher said.
An analysis of such accounts, groups, and pages by the Atlantic Council digital forensic lab reported that thousands of pages were strongly supported Pakistan and linked India”.
A number of activists and journalists on social media platform have been abducted and threatened for the past two years.
"Engaging the war of accounts and making the dissenting voices unrelated in cyberspace is probably their main aim," Shahzad Ahmad, Digital Rights Group, stated.
In last week, Facebook Inc. removed a social media networking in the Philippines and took the uncommon step of connecting it to a businessman who supposed he had managed the leader's online election campaign, in 2016.