New Delhi: The social media giant Facebook said that it is taking down 687 pages related to the Congress party before the Lok Sabha elections. This gives credit to BJP’s accusation that Congress is spreading fake news.
Facebook also said that they are removing 103 accounts of Pakistani military employees but added that it was not connected to the removal of pro-Congress pages.
The social media company said that the move comes after “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” of these pages and accounts.
A total of 138 pages and 549 accounts which were related to Congress IT cell. These pages were followed by 206,000 accounts on Facebook.
According to the silicon valley based company, the individuals were using fake accounts and joined different groups to increase content and engagement. The content were mostly against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other opponents of Congress.
“We removed 687 Facebook Pages and accounts — the majority of which had already been detected and suspended by our automated systems — that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior in India and were linked to individuals associated with an IT Cell of the Indian National Congress (INC),” Facebook said.
Meanwhile, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Congress was running a fake campaign against Narendra Modi and appreciated the move by Facebook.
