Over 400 accounts and Facebook pages in the Philippines were taken down for engaging in “various malicious activities” ahead of the May 9 general elections, the social media giant’s parent firm Meta said Thursday in a statement.
Meta said it also removed Facebook pages, groups, and accounts of “dangerous organizations” such as the New People’s Army (NPA) – which it described as a “banned terrorist organization”—after violating its policies and engaging in violence.
The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
In a separate statement, the social network said it is expanding protection for public figures, including journalists and human rights defenders, against online harassment.
Meta said it has rolled out a free digital security and safety program to secure and protect journalists and human rights defenders’ digital assets and counter online harassment.
The Journalist Safety Hub would centralize all resources and tools available on its platforms, it added.
Meta said it abolished the network of over 400 accounts, pages, and groups that worked together “to systematically violate our Community Standards and evade enforcement.”
“The people behind this activity claimed to be ‘hacktivists’ and relied primarily on authentic and duplicate accounts to post and amplify content about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, account recovery, and defacing and compromising of primarily news entities’ websites in the Philippines,” Meta said.
The firm revealed it also removed several clusters of activity that switched their FB pages and groups to the elections to increase their following.
The move comes after Twitter Inc. in January suspended more than 300 accounts reportedly promoting presidential frontrunner Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., citing a violation of its policies against platform manipulation and spam.
The majority of these social media accounts had already been taken down as part of routine actions before news website Rappler’s report on pro-Marcos Twitter handles, the company said. An investigation into the matter is ongoing, it added.
Twitter’s policy on manipulation and spam cover accounts that have inauthentic engagements or those that “make accounts or content appear more popular or active than they are.”
For Facebook, Meta said: “One Page that mainly shared non-political dance videos renamed itself to become ‘Bongbong Marcos news,’ while another Page that started off as supporting a politician later changed its name to ‘Your Financial Answer’ and began posting loan advice.”
Multiple clusters of activity from countries including Vietnam, Thailand, and the United States that posed as members of local communities in the Philippines, in an apparent attempt to monetize people’s attention on the election, were also removed, according to Meta.
“They posed as supporters of political campaigns or local news entities and used names like Philippines Trending News, Duterte Live, Related to Francis Leo Marcos, and Pinas News,” it said.
“They claimed to share live footage while purporting to be local news sources on the ground in an attempt to drive people to their clickbait websites filled with ads,” Facebook’s parent said.
Meta also took down a dozen clusters of activity focused on fake engagement, with over a month remaining before May 2022 polls.
The firm vowed that it continues to combat misinformation, noting that it removes content that will keep normal political processes from functioning such as “content intended to suppress voting, as well as certain highly deceptive manipulated media.”
“We have made several updates to our Community Standards, including expanding protections for public figures such as journalists and human rights defenders,” the company said.
“We now remove more types of harmful content such as claims about sexual activity, comparisons to animals and attacks through negative physical descriptions. Our policies now also provide stronger protections against gender-based harassment for everyone, including public figures,” it added.
According to Meta, new policies were also launched last year against “mass harassment and brigading” that target individuals at heightened risk of offline harm.
“This includes attacks against dissidents—even if the content on its own wouldn’t violate our policies. We also remove state-linked and adversarial networks of accounts, Pages and Groups that work together to harass or try to silence people,” it said.
“These efforts and updates to policies are informed by our independent Human Rights Impact Assessment Report on the Philippines published in 2021,” it added.
It also earlier shared new strategies it will be implementing against COVID-19 misinformation and for the May 2022 polls. It earlier removed 24 million pieces of false COVID-19 and vaccine content on Facebook.
Meta said it has been continuously improving policies to fight misinformation shared on its platforms.