‘Sensational political content’ increasingly used as clickbait – Facebook

MANILA, Philippines – On the same day that Facebook announced their takedown of a spam network in the Philippines with 4.8 million followers, the company said they’ve also taken down a similar set of pages in Brazil.  

Facebook took down 68 Pages and 43 accounts associated with a Brazilian marketing group called Raposo Fernandes Associados (RFA) for violating their misrepresentation and spam policies. 

Facebook, one of the tech giants facing challenges in toeing the line between censorship and free speech, emphasized the type of content did not serve as impetus for the takedown. Rather, the takedown was based on the behavior of the accounts, which posted “massive amounts of clickbait intended to direct people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and appear legitimate, but are actually ad farms.”

According to Facebook’s post, it’s political content that’s getting people clicking.

“We have seen spammers increasingly using sensational political content – across the political spectrum – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site. The RFA assets we removed were engaging in this type of elicit behavior.” 

Blatant money-making operations prey on people’s political views, inciting extreme emotions in order to get them to click posts that lead to ad-laden websites. The more eyes they harvest, the more money they make – at the expense of what the users politically believe to be true or not. 

Along with political gains fueled by propaganda and misinformation, financial incentives are also keeping the fake news industry well and alive. 

“We are continuously working to uncover this kind of abuse, and we know that the people behind it – whether economically or politically motivated – are becoming increasingly more sophisticated in their tactics,” Facebook said. 

Facebook says it has not found similar behavior on its other platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp.

In July 2018, Facebook removed a large number of pages in Brazil too, totaling 196 pages and 87 accounts whose content, according to the company, explicitly sowed division and spread misinformation. – Rappler.com