Facebook suspends 'organized network' of Pakistani accounts and web pages:
Facebook, the world's largest social networking site, has announced that it has launched a 'network' of 103 web pages, 78 groups, 453 individual accounts and 107 Instagram accounts from Pakistan on its platform. Has been suspended for involvement in suspicious activities.
According to Facebook, they investigated the suspicious accounts and found that they were "organized and uncertified".
Facebook has published its report entitled 'Coordinated in Authentic Behavior', a report that identifies accounts that are being run in a highly organized manner and trying to divert public attention. Are
Facebook provided information about these accounts and pages to the Internet Observatory Group (SIO) at Stanford University in the United States.
The group's research found that the most important common denominator was that the suspended accounts violated Facebook's policies by systematically reporting large-scale accounts to Pakistan, Islamabad. , Used to publish material against the Pakistani government and the Pakistani army.
The SIO's investigation also revealed that the suspended accounts also reported for the suspension of accounts linked to the Ahmadi community, and that the content on the network's pages and accounts was published by the Pakistani military, Pakistani intelligence. The ISI and the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were full of praise.
Last year, Facebook suspended more than 100 Pakistani-linked accounts, which the company said were also found to be "organized and uncertified". "These pages and accounts have been linked to ISPR personnel from the Pakistan Army's public relations department."
Systematic large-scale reporting
The SIO's investigation revealed that the network of suspended pages and accounts was reporting on Facebook "largely highly organized" complaints and accounts that were "anti-Islamic". And Pakistan was against it.
Shelby Grossman, lead researcher and author of a study by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), told the BBC that the most important finding in the study was the network's "rapidity". And qualifications' who have reported accounts so systematically.
List of suspended pages and their number of members
The study found that trolling pages, such as the Voice of Islam page, persuaded users to report as many accounts as possible and told users how to do so.
According to the SIO, the network has seen claims that Facebook suspended more than 200 accounts following its complaint. However, it could not be confirmed whether the network's complaints were the cause of Facebook's actions against the more than 200 accounts.
The SIO also stated in its research that the network was also using an automated method of filing complaints so that it could be used to report and report a large number of pages and groups. ۔
According to the SIO, the user who created this method called 'Auto Reporter' has regularly written that the purpose of creating this method is to report 'accounts that are anti-Islamic, anti-Pakistan and dangerous'. Can be due.
At the same time, the network developed and published training materials that help users learn how to report as many accounts as possible.
Shelby Grossman told the BBC: "The network has created videos of training materials on YouTube to tell users how to report accounts. I don't think the methods to speed up the process have been tried before.
Common Value in Network: 'Pakistani Government and Pakistan Army Content
The SIO noted in its research that the common denominator in the entire network suspended by Facebook was that "all its pages and accounts contained nationalist content and in particular the Pakistani military." And the ISI was praised.
A page suspended by Facebook
Apart from this, the second thing that came to light was that the accounts of the IK were clearly supporting the ruling party PTI and opposing the PML-N.
When Shelby Grossman was asked if his team tried to find out who was behind the network, he said he did not know, but his own guess was that the content "Research has shown that it was not up to standard with the accounts suspended last year for ISPR-linked accounts."
The SIO study said that "the accounts included in this network were also seen publishing anti-India material and posting in support of the Khalistan movement."
We also saw that the network was publishing material against the Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian Army.
The SIO wrote in its research that they could not use the information provided by Facebook to find out who the people running the network are and to whom they are connected.
However, the authors of SIO write, "We saw in a post published on this network that one of their colleagues had died and paid tribute to him by saying that he was very hardworking. , Was patriotic and worked diligently against opponents and was associated with agencies. However, it also appeared that the content published on the network was not up to the standard of content from accounts linked to the Pakistani military last year.
Shelby Grossman added that the research suggests that social networking sites should re-evaluate the complaint system because it is more difficult to check the content and such networks add to the difficulties.
She added that her team would not work on it further but hoped that Pakistani researchers and journalists would work on it further with the help of the material included in the SIO report.
Some of the accounts created in Pakistan present themselves as Indian accounts.t
The contacted Facebook about the report, they said that their own research had revealed that the entire network was being run from Pakistan, but that some of the accounts had Indian identities.
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