Facebook Gets Rid Of Fake Accounts Causing Political Tension In UK

Saanvi Araav - Mar 08, 2019

Facebook is cracking down on fake accounts, groups, and pages that are trying to influence the political spectrum in the UK and Romania.

Recently, Facebook has got rid of a number of fake accounts in the United Kingdoms. This time the whole scheme is very sophisticated. In total, the social network has pulled the plug on more than 137 fake accounts ( Instagram also). These are accounts of pages and groups that are trying to coordinate unauthentic behavior.

So basically, they were trying to play both sides in UK political debate. They - the perpetrators- were posing as the far-right and far-left activists. They kept on spreading devise information about racism, LGBT, free speech, religion, immigration together with many other hot topics.

Is this scheme sounds familiar to you? - Of course, because it is the same thing we witnessed in the US back in 2016, the perpetrators were trying to increase tensions between different sides under the disguise of gathering support.

The social network company has yet revealed any information about the origin of the operators. But from sideline information, we know that the scheme is sophisticated. They are operating not only in Russian style to attempt social division but also change the names of their groups and page frequently to avoid tracking.

They were quite successful at what they were trying to do to - because in total they have amassed 175, 000 following accounts on their Pages and

At the same time, Facebook has also taken down 31 fake accounts, pages and groups, which are supporting the Social Democratic Party in Romania. However, this case was much simpler. Facebook was able to trace it back to one supporter of the Party. It turned out to be just an attempt to promote the party.

These actions of removal come when Facebook in under tension from the UK government. Many politicians have commented that Facebook is playing a key role in spreading fake news, and also called Zuckerberg and his team - digital gangsters who work only for profit.

While this move may not stem the allegations, they do show that the social giant holds concerns about dealing with suspicious activity.