Facebook will no more accept fake ‘Likes’ on LS polls
Mumbai:Facebook has decided to delete about 52,000 pages that encourage fake ‘likes’ on LS polls for politicians and political parties in India.
It has built up a combination of automated and manual systems to block accounts used for fraudulent purposes and 'likes'. "We're always focused on maintaining the integrity of our site, but we've placed an increased focus on abuse from fake accounts recently," stated an official statement of Facebook.
iBN Live also reported, ‘This action is being taken against sellers of fake clicks and are helping to shut them down.’ With the growing power of social media, politicians across parties have taken to the digital medium to interact with the youth through Facebook and Twitter in this election season.
BJP Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is a clear winner with a massive 1.2 crore 'likes'. On the other hand, Arvind Kejriwal have around 48 lakh fake followers, Mamata Banerjee 6,70,000 and Akhikesh Yadav 4,75,000. Officials even stated that fake accounts are caught at various points, including during registration, friending, clicking the 'like' button and messaging.
'We write rules to catch anomalies that signal fake accounts, and we use classifiers based on machine learning to help us identify suspicious behaviour,'allegedly stated Facebook’s spokesperson.
According to a study by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), there are 160 high impact constituencies in India which are likely to be influenced by social media during the general elections."Beyond the need to maintain authentic relationships on Facebook, these third-party vendors often attempt to use malware or other forms of deception to generate fraudulent Likes, which is harmful to all users and the Internet as a whole," added spokesperson.
Ankhi Das, Director of Facebook, said that Facebook is majorly focusing on making sure that people get the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
"This is an opportunity to engage actively and regularly with constituents have led campaign teams and leaders to use the medium, making Facebook a core part of the political infrastructure in the country," concluded Das.
