A total of 67 pages, 68 accounts, 40 groups and 25 Instagram accounts associated with public relations man Nic Gabunada was taken down by Facebook for “inauthentic coordinated behavior” and for using fake accounts to mislead people about the origin of contents posted on the pages.
The pages taken down reportedly used a mix of real and fake accounts to drive messaging in behalf of political candidates, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said during a press briefing in Taguig.
Gleicher said that a total of 3.6 million Filipinos follow at least one of the pages and at least 1.8 million accounts were involved in one of the identified groups.
“They key here is they’re using fake accounts, purports to represent a real person,” added Gleicher, who flew to Manila for the briefing.
Gabunada had confirmed that he handled the social media campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, but added that he was “surprised” that his name was tagged with the pages which the social media has taken down.
“Before kasi Facebook automatically makes you part of a group without asking you. Now they have to give consent. My name is all over the place. This may be the reason why some pages, after they examined, nandoon ang pangalan ko,” he said.
“I was so surprised…I just thought this is all unfortunate na ilagay pangalan ko,” he added.
He added that it was “unfortunate” that Facebook associated his name with the 200 profiles and pages that were taken down due to misleading behavior and fake accounts.
He added that some of the pages mentioned were not even associated with him. Gabunada’s personal Facebook account was also taken down on Friday morning.
But Gleicher explained that posting political contents was “not the basis” of the takedown, adding that it was not even the person behind the behavior, but the pattern that violates Facebook policies.
“It’s not about whose behind it, it’s about the set of behavior, what they did and that’s why were taking this action,” he said.
Some of the pages removed include “Bong Go Supporters,” “Duterte Warriors,” “Pinulungang Binisaya,” “Trending Now,” and “Kuya Sonny Angara.”
Gleicher said the contents of the pages, however, were undeniably related to the upcoming midterm polls.
“The primary role we see this network doing is working on behalf of political candidates of course it is related to the upcoming elections,” Gleicher said.
In fact, majority of the contents “do not violate our policies,” he said.
He said some $59,000 in ad spending was involved and was spent in a combination of Philippine pesos, Saudi riyal, and US dollars are involved in the operations of the “cluster.”
But when asked whether they have observed a money-making pattern in the cluster, Gleicher said it was something that they cannot validate.
Facebook earlier took down accounts and groups and pages managed by Twinmark Media also for their coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Gabunada said he was planning to appeal Facebook’s decision to takedown his personal account which he has been using for years.
Despite the massive purge, Gabunada said his communications and consulting business were unaffected.
“If they will have to take down my account its their prerogative, on the other hand they have to consider I’m not doing it for the sake if whatever it is that they’re accusing me of,” he said.
“I’m just one of those that shares and invited to join certain groups,” he added.
Facebook said it has engaged an AI-based solution as well as teams of human experts to track and remove “bad actors” on the platform worldwide.