Facebook deletes fake accounts spreading misinformation related to China, PH police, and military

Facebook shut down various fake accounts that are connected to China and Philippines' police and military forces for misinformation.

Facebook investigated duplicate accounts and found connections with PH Military and Police

Facebook: Fake accounts, begone!

Facebook cleans up fake accounts

These fake Facebook accounts are in the front and center in terms of misinformation on local politics and critics of the Duterte administration. According to Facebook, each fake account is used as an integral part of a ploy to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing.

As of now, Facebook already removed more than 57 accounts, 31 pages, and 20 Instagram accounts claiming to be linked to the PH state forces. The PH military and police fake pages were found to be guilty of violating the police on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

These accounts are used to "evade enforcement, post content, comment, and manage pages," according to Facebook. Topics of said fake accounts included but not limited to military activities against terrorism, views on the anti-terrorism act, criticism of communism, youth activists, the opposition.

Surprisingly, the fake Philippines police and military pages spent around PHP 53,421 on advertisement to reach more users.

For China-related fake Facebook pages, the company cracked down on 155 Facebook accounts, 11 pages, 9 groups, and 6 Instagram accounts. These China-related pages used fake accounts posing as Filipinos to post, comment, and like posts pertaining to Chinese activities in PH territory especially in the South China Sea.

In addition, these China-related accounts showed intense support to the Duterte administration, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio as well as criticism to critics such as Rappler.

What do you guys think?

Source: CNN Philippines