Thousands Of Fake Facebook Accounts Purged Ahead Of UK Elections

Well, it seems that the world is at least learning from the mistakes made during the most recent US presidential elections, with the UK potentially avoiding the same social media-fueled issues during its upcoming election. Facebook just revealed that “tens of thousands” of fake accounts have been purged from its platform while claiming that it is keeping a close eye on social activities related to the event.

Along with eliminating a huge, albeit unspecific number of fake accounts, Facebook will also be looking closely at re-posts of contents and any upticks in messaging trends that already caught the attention of the social network, TechCrunch reports. The company provided more details with regards to the effects of the measure to the publication, as well.

“These changes help us detect fake accounts on our service more effectively — including ones that are hard to spot,” Facebook told Tech Crunch. “We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity — without assessing the content itself. For example, our systems may detect repeated posting of the same content, or an increase in messages sent. With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”

Facebook also stepped up its efforts to combat fake news on the platform by publishing public service ads to spread awareness on fraudulent content and how to spot them, BBC reports. This is a clear attempt at addressing an issue that was becoming increasingly clear as the social media’s influence has grown all over the world.

No matter how much Facebook denied being a huge factor that impacted major global events in the past, it was still a fact that practically everyone else other than Mark Zuckerberg and his team could see. These new developments indicate that Facebook is at least taking the concerns of global leaders more seriously, but the social network has still made no definitive act to take responsibility for its considerable presence.