There’s been a lot of talk about Facebook and fake news lately. And while the just-past election season proved that fake news is hardly harmless, Facebook apparently thinks it’s even worse than we thought.
A major report out today from Facebook says that the platform has become what Reuters called a “battleground” for governments trying to sway public opinions in other countries. This isn’t only fake news as we normally think of it. It’s intentional manipulation of people by governments around the world.
The report describes these subtle efforts by nations as going beyond fake news stories to include something called amplification. This is when people—often paid professionals or government officials using fake accounts—widen the reach of the offending posts, presumably through commenting, sharing, etc.
So Facebook is taking actions to stop these accounts and any activity meant to drive geopolitical agendas.
The report outlines how the social platform intends to target this through behavior analysis of user activity.
