While many individuals, organizations, and businesses are fixated on helping people around the world, many attention seekers have to took it to social media to grab tons of attention by providing misinformation to the common social media population. In a recent report,it has been found that Facebook have only recently removed 1,887 accounts, pages, and groups on the platform which were playing a part in luring in more followers by spreading fake information about the covid 19 Virus.
The head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, Nathaniel Gleicher, while she talked about the issue, said that “We have seen threat actors leverage the coronavirus pandemic and discussion about the coronavirus pandemic in the same way that we’ve seen threat actors leverage other types of major events around the world”
Amongst recent reports, the social media platform have taken down at least eight networks of fake accounts, pages, and groups. The largest network amongst those that have been taken down was that of a Georgian media firm, known as Espersona. The channel has now been indefinitely barred from the platform and so far no other information has been provided regarding the matter.
Must Read: Uber to lay off 3700 employees
It should be remembered that last month, the social media giant was able to flag 511 Facebook Pages, 101 Facebook accounts, 56 Instagram accounts, and 122 Groups. As per Facebook, the users were posing as news outlets and were using fake names as well as pictures.
Apart from this, a smaller network of fake accounts was linked to the anti-immigration website VDARE. Similarly, another was linked to QAnon, an online community known for pushing right-wing conspiracies theories. Gleicher also highlighted that each network had a different ambition. He stated, “We saw them use content around coronavirus to further those goals in the same way that we’ve seen other actors do this, so it was fairly opportunistic. If you’re trying to build an audience, then you would want to use messages from the topic that everyone’s already talking about, which is coronavirus right now”.
