FALSE: PH news sites may be ‘victims of fake news from Facebook’

Claim: Philippine news groups may have used “fake news” content as a source regarding Facebook’s purge of pages and accounts.

The “independent tech news” website TechSabado posted the claim on October 24.

TechSabado, in its “fact check” article, headlined with the possibility that the news groups were misled into using fake sources in their stories on Facebook’s decision to take down a network of fake accounts.

TechSabado pointed out “anomalies” in the article “Removing a Spam Network From Facebook in the Philippines” from newsroom.fb.com. This article was the source of most reports from Philippine news sites, including Rappler, about Facebook’s purge of 95 pages and 39 accounts for “violating spam and authenticity policies.”

Tech Sabado pointed out 4 supposed anomalies with the newsroom.fb.com article

1. The post’s URL was not consistent with the rest of the articles from the website.
   
   Brazil’s purge story had a URL of https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/ while the Philippine version had https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/. 

2. The post did not have links of other news or a “Related News” part.

3. The post was not listed in the site’s News tab.

4. The post did not appear after an in-site search using the post’s exact title.

Rating: FALSE

The facts: Facebook said the newsroom.fb.com article is “correct, true, and legit.”

Newsroom is the official news website of Facebook.

Tech Sabado later updated their story to say that Facebook confirmed the authenticity of the purge story.

The full clarification now reads:

We got word from Facebook Philippines that the story link regarding the banned pages is correct, true and legit, as part of Facebook’s ongoing efforts to protect their services from abuse as stated in their news item. But then again, no one from the company could explain the “anomalies” we found after scrutinizing some details on the delivery of the said news coming from the Facebook Newsroom. That answer, we are still waiting.

Facebook also fixed the purge story’s link to be consistent with other newsroom.fb.com articles.

Previous link (still redirects to the article):
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/removing-a-spam-network-from-facebook-in-the-philippines/

Current link:
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/removing-a-spam-network-from-facebook-in-the-philippines/

A “Related News” part was also added.

The story can now be found under the News tab.

The story can now be searched.

 

Facebook named 12 of the 95 pages that were taken down. These pages have shared false or misleading stories previously which Rappler has checked. (READ: LIST: False news shared by PH-based pages taken down by Facebook)

Despite this, Tech Sabado has not updated its false headline as of posting time. — Miguel Imperial/Rappler.com

If you suspect a Facebook page, group, account, a website, or an article is spreading false information, let Rappler know by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.