Facebook Removes Hundreds of Pages, Accounts Ahead of Midterms

Facebook announced on Thursday that it has identified and removed hundreds of U.S. pages and accounts ahead of the midterms. “Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company wrote in a 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.” Others used the social-media platform to “mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate,” Facebook said. The pages included both right and left-wing content. For example, the creator of website Right Wing News made multiple Facebook pages and accounts under fake names over the last year, The New York Times reported. Twitter also removed 50 accounts earlier this month that were run by Americans “posing as Republican state lawmakers.”