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Facebook Takes Down Accounts, Pages of Trump Ally Stone

Reuters

   Facebook Inc. on Wednesday removed 50 personal and professional pages
   connected to U.S. President Donald Trump's longtime adviser Roger
   Stone, who is due to report to prison next week.

   The social media platform said Stone and his associates, including a
   prominent supporter of the right-wing Proud Boys group in Stone's home
   state of Florida, had used fake accounts and followers to promote
   Stone's books and posts.

   Facebook moved against Stone on the same day it took down accounts tied
   to employees of the family of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro and two
   other networks connected to domestic political operations in Ecuador
   and Ukraine.

   Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said the
   removals were meant to show that artificially inflating engagement for
   political impact would be stopped, no matter how well-connected the
   practitioners.

   "It doesn't matter what they're saying, and it doesn't matter who they
   are," Gleicher told Reuters before the announcement on the company's
   [1]blog. "We expect we're going to see more political actors cross this
   line and use coordinated inauthentic behavior to try to influence
   public debate."

   54 accounts removed

   Facebook officials said they took down Stone's personal Facebook and
   Instagram pages and his Stone Cold Truth Facebook page, which had
   141,000 followers. A total of 54 Facebook accounts and 50 pages were
   removed for misbehavior, including the creation of fake accounts. The
   accounts spent more than $300,000 on advertisements over the past few
   years, Facebook said.

   Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was briefed on the actions beforehand,
   officials said.

   The removals risk further angering Trump and other conservatives who
   accuse Facebook of suppressing right-wing voices. Facebook last month
   took down a Trump re-election ad that included a Nazi symbol, and it
   pledged to steer users to facts on voting when Trump, or anyone else,
   touches on the topic.

   Facebook is under pressure from civil rights advocates and allied
   groups as well, and hundreds of advertisers have joined a boycott
   demanding the company crack down on hateful and divisive messages.

References

   1. https://bit.ly/2Z7QSzc

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