In a significant move towards eradicating the misinformation problem, Facebook today released a statement on their Newsroom Blog announcing the removal of Pages, Groups and accounts for violating Facebook’s policies on coordinated inauthentic behaviour. The statement’s focus was on India and Pakistan.

Apart from the removal of these Pages and accounts, Facebook specifically identified who was involved in this “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. Lawyer-speak for “spreading fake news”, perhaps?

They’ve openly named the IT Cell of the Indian National Congress and mentioned that 687 Facebook Pages and accounts connected to them were removed. Another interesting highlight of the report is the direct mention of IT firm Silver Touch—for whom 15 Facebook Pages, groups and accounts were removed. Silver Touch is a known Ahmedabad-based IT firm with connections to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP hasn’t been directly named by Facebook in their blog post.

Facebook has clarified, “We’re taking down these Pages and accounts based on their behaviour, not the content they posted. In each case detailed below, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves.”

Exploits of the Indian National Congress IT Cell

The statement by Facebook states that individuals behind these activities used fake accounts—the majority of which had already been detected and suspended by FB’s automated systems—and joined various Groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement on their Pages. The Page admins and account owners posted about local news and political issues, including topics like the upcoming elections, candidate views, the INC and criticism of political opponents including the BJP.

Excerpt from FB Blog post

They’ve even provided sample posts like these:

Exploits of IT firm Silver Touch

Facebook has also removed 15 pages connected to Silver Touch, an IT firm which has connections with the Bharatiya Janata Party. 

The statement reads: “They posted about local news and political events, including topics like the Indian government, the upcoming elections, the BJP and alleged misconduct of political opponents including the INC.”

In the blog, they’ve given two instances by a page called ‘The India Eye’.

According to stories done by Alt News and The Wire, India Eye is a portal that was promoted directly by the official Narendra Modi app. Silver Touch’s India Eye was also traced back to accounts run by Himanshu Jain, the director of the IT firm. The firm has also received contracts to develop multiple Government products and apps.

It’s rather strange that despite ample evidence of Silver Touch’s connection to the BJP, Facebook has not directly named the party. However, Facebook’s statement names the IT Cell run by the Indian National Congress.

Perhaps the only explanation to this is that by adding an extra layer between themselves and pages like India Eye, the BJP was being smarter. As for Congress, it ran fake news pages with direct connections to the party.

This move by Facebook is game-changing when it comes to election campaigning. Since they have iterated clearly they have removed the pages based on behaviour, not content, it also means their algorithm has been developed to identify behavioural traits which will quickly recognise political mercenaries and fake news purveyors. Things just got interesting.