Facebook removes pro-Duterte pages for violating policies

MANILA, Philippines – Facebook has removed a network of 95 Pages and 39 accounts in the Philippines that violated its policies on spam as well as its authenticity policies, the company announced on its blog, Monday, October 22, US time (Tuesday, October 23, Manila time).

The Pages published content ranging from politics to entertainment, but the common thread, according to Facebook, was that all the pages were “sharing links to the same advertising click farms off Facebook.” 

Facebook didn’t publish the entire list of Pages, but the examples they provided were pro-Duterte pages including Duterte Media, Duterte sa Pagbabago BUKAS, DDS, Duterte Phenomenon, and DU30 Trending News. Other pages sharing similar links but don’t directly refer to President Duterte include Hot Babes, News Media Trends, Bossing Vic, Pilipinas Daily News, Like and Win, Manang Imee, and Karlo ang Probinsiyano. 

The network had a massive following. Facebook said that 4.8 million users followed at least one of these 95 Pages. The Pages were said to have violated Facebook’s policies by “encouraging people to visit low quality websites that contain little substantive content and are full of disruptive ads.” 

Facebook also asserted that it will continue to be active in monitoring a range of abuses and removing Pages that break their rules.

“We don’t want this kind of behavior on Facebook — and we’re investing heavily in both people and technology to keep bad content off our services. We have more than doubled the number of people working on safety and security this year and now have more than 20,000 people around the world. We use reports from our community and technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect bad behavior and take action more quickly,” it said.

The company emphasized that this is “some of the most important work being done at Facebook,” and called the takedown “a small step in the right direction.” – Rappler.com