Social Science Research Council Research AMP Just Tech
News Item

Facebook Has Removed More Than A Dozen Big Conservative And Liberal Political Pages | BuzzFeed News

Facebook has removed over a dozen American hyperpartisan liberal and conservative pages with more than 30 million combined fans after discovering they were administered by the same fake account and were in violation of policies against spamming, a company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

All of the removed pages had recently, and almost exclusively, been promoting links to LifeZette.com, the conservative website founded by Fox News host Laura Ingraham. It was sold last year to Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz, though Ingraham maintains a minority stake in the company, according to CNN. LifeZette’s content continues to be heavily promoted on Ingraham’s social media accounts. (Her Facebook page and the main LifeZette page were not removed by Facebook. The company did not respond to requests for comment.)

The removals come as Facebook says it is in the midst of stepped-up efforts to detect possible policy violations on political pages in advance of the midterms. The takedowns deal a huge blow to a group of once-prominent hyperpartisan publishers on Facebook, and reinforces how much that business has declined since 2016 thanks to algorithm changes and heightened policy enforcement by the social network.

Source: Facebook Has Removed More Than A Dozen Big Conservative And Liberal Political Pages | BuzzFeed News