[The Indian elections are a “top priority” for the company, said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of product management for civic integrity, on a visit last week to New Delhi. He said it had created a special team dedicated to the Indian polls, a “rare and unusual” move.]
By
Joanna Slater
 |
|
A
woman checks the Facebook page of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
(Manish
Swarup/AP)
|
NEW
DELHI — Facebook deleted
hundreds of pages and accounts days before the start of India’s national
elections, saying they were part of a coordinated effort to mislead its users.
The most popular page removed — the India Eye
— had more than 2.5 million followers and provided a steady stream of content
favoring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Facebook also removed 687 pages and accounts
linked to individuals associated with India’s main opposition Congress Party.
About 900 million Indians are eligible to
vote in the upcoming elections, which will unfold in phases starting April 11
and concluding May 19.
In the run-up to the polls, there has been
increasing concern about the spread of false information through social media.
India has about 300 million Facebook users — the highest number in the world —
and the country is the largest market for Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging
service.
After facing harsh criticism, Facebook
strengthened its controls on political advertising and pledged to take steps to
tackle “fake news” on its platform. It also introduced measures to curb the
sharing of rumors via WhatsApp following a spate of mob violence in India last
year.
The Indian elections are a “top priority” for
the company, said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of product management
for civic integrity, on a visit last week to New Delhi. He said it had created
a special team dedicated to the Indian polls, a “rare and unusual” move.
Monday’s removal of pages and accounts was
the largest ever by Facebook in India. The deletions were not carried out
because of the content on the pages, but because the individuals involved used
fake accounts to “mislead others about who they were” while operating in a
coordinated manner, wrote Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of
cybersecurity policy, in a post.
Facebook said that individuals associated
with an information technology unit of the opposition Congress Party used fake
accounts to spread politically driven content and increase engagement. The
Congress Party responded on Twitter that none of its official pages or any
pages run by verified volunteers were affected by Facebook’s move.
On the other side of India’s partisan divide,
Facebook removed the India Eye, which offered praise for Prime Minister Narendra
Modi and criticism of the Congress Party. The India Eye was also featured on
Modi’s eponymous cellphone application, according to a recent report.
Facebook said that the individuals behind the
page tried to hide their real identities but were associated with a technology
firm called Silver Touch, which is based in the state of Gujarat. Indian media
reports have previously linked Silver Touch to government contracts. Silver
Touch executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The fact that “partisans on both sides
resorted to such tactics is a troubling feature,” wrote Kanishk Karan and Ben
Nimmo of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It suggests
that such inauthentic behavior may increasingly be considered a necessary part
of political campaigning.”
Separately, Facebook also removed more than
100 pages, accounts and groups that it found were linked to employees of the
public relations arm of Pakistan’s military who had tried to conceal their
identities.
Niha Masih contributed to this report.
Read
more:
