Facebook isn't just removing fake political pages to thwart election
meddling -- sometimes, it's just about culling spam. The social site has
removed more than a dozen "hyperpartisan" pages across the political
spectrum after learning that fake accounts were administering the bunch.
All of them had recently started spamming links to LifeZette, the
conservative site founded (and still promoted by) Fox News' Laura
Ingraham. These were not small outlets, either. At least several of the
pages, such as American News and Truth Examiner, had millions of fans
each.
The bogus accounts also shared LifeZette material on two apolitical pages (also removed) that had over a million fans each.
And unlike some attempts at political interference, it's patently clear
who was responsible. Conservative publishers John Crane, Cyrus Massoumi
and Tyler Shapiro ultimately controlled all of the pages. Massoumi even
confessed in emails to working with LifeZette before attempting to take
back his statements in subsequent messages. The switch to pushing
LifeZette articles also followed soon after American News lost business
from Indian people paying to share links to their own US political
sites. The pages were clearly spam vehicles -- it was just a question of
who was spamming.
While the publishers weren't explicitly trying to skew the political
discourse, the crackdown might have a significant impact all the same.
American News was one of the highest-performing political pages on
Facebook during the 2016 presidential election, and there are 30 million
total fans spread across all the pages. Even though users haven't been
as active with these pages as they were two years ago, this could
represent a big shift in how many people get their political talking
points.
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