Facebook Cracks Down On Over 800 Fake Accounts Ahead of November Election

Facebook removed 559 pages and 251 accounts that consistently violated rules against spam and ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior,’ according to cybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher and product manager Oscar Rodriguez.

Voter manipulation took place ahead of the 2016 election, where fake accounts and “ad farms” were set up to trick people into thinking they were forums for legitimate political debate, according to Gleicher and Rodriguez.

Mark Zuckerberg says  Facebook is now better prepared to defend against efforts to manipulate the platform to influence elections and has recently thwarted foreign influence campaigns targeting several countries.

Now, Facebook has plans for setting up a “war room” on its Silicon Valley campus to quickly repel efforts to use the social network to meddle in upcoming elections in the US and Brazil.

Facebook has started showing who is behind election-related online ads, and have shut down accounts involved in coordinated stealth influence campaigns, according to DailyMail.