Facebook Removes More Than 800 Political Pages For Alleged Spam-Like Behavior

With major elections in both the United States and Brazil in a matter of weeks, Facebook has purged its site of hundreds of political pages. The site announced Thursday that more than 800 accounts and pages had been removed from the site for allegedly engaging in spam tactics to increase their reach.

Unlike a similar incident earlier this year, in which Facebook deleted dozens of pages with possible links to Russian troll efforts, many of the pages deleted Thursday were run domestically. The total came out to 559 pages and 251 regular accounts. According to Facebook, the accounts were removed less for their content and more for their behavior.

The company accused the page operators of using coordinated spam efforts to drive up likes and traffic. The pages affected were political in nature, on the left and right sides of the spectrum. They included right-leaning “Nation in Distress” and the leftward “Reasonable People Unite,” according to the Washington Post.

“Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites,” Facebook said. “Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was.”

Thursday’s development was not received well by everyone. Some of the affected pages’ operators accused Facebook of shutting down legitimate political pages for breaking arbitrary rules. In an interview with the Washington Post, “Reasonable People Unite” publisher Chris Metcalf called himself a “legitimate political activist” and said he did not understand Facebook’s rules.

Facebook’s treatment of highly political pages has come into question multiple times in 2018. The site joined many other tech platforms in banning conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, but was found to allegedly be protecting hateful, far-right pages with large followings earlier this year. Even with evidence to the contrary, President Donald Trump called Facebook out for allegedly silencing right-wing voices.

Facebook has publicly stated its goal to clean up its political “fake news” problem ahead of this fall’s major elections. Brazilians will go to the polls for the country’s presidential runoff on Oct. 28, while Americans will vote in congressional midterms on Nov. 6.