Facebook suspends 453 Pakistani accounts 'claiming to be based in India'; spreading lies

In a massive crackdown against fake news, social media giant Facebook suspended 453 accounts from Pakistan, accusing them of spreading propaganda and peddling malicious content. Apart from the 453 Facebook accounts, it also suspended 103 Pages, 78 Groups and 107 Instagram accounts handled by Pakistani operatives, being used to target India, the Indian Military and certain domestic and minority communities in Pakistan. 

In its detailed Takedown Report, Facebook revealed that many of these Pakistani accounts "were claiming to be based in India — to post content and manage a handful of Indian military Pages and Groups." Its content focused along the lines of memes and propaganda around social and political issues in Pakistan and India, including India’s policies toward China and the Indian military. On countless occasions, it used these accounts to spread vicious content and fake news centred around maligning India's social fabric, including peddling pro-Khalistani propaganda. 

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Sharing further details with the Stanford Internet Observatory in a report, Facebook gave insights as to why such strong action had been launched. Accusing Pakistani accounts of "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" to silence "critics of Islam and Pakistan Government", Stanford in their report said, "The network encouraged users to mass-report accounts that were critical of Islam and the Pakistani government, and in some cases accounts that were part of the Ahmadi religious community." 

"The network appears to have primarily targeted Pakistanis and Indians; posts were in Urdu, Hindi, English, and Punjabi. Facebook reports that 70,000 accounts followed at least one of the Pages and 1.1 million users belonged to the Groups," it added.

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