Facebook will verify the identity of people running popular pages, as part of its continued efforts to stem fake news and propaganda.

The company today said all “large” pages would be audited - any which did not clear the process would be prevented from posting.

The move is designed to prevent users run pages using fake accounts hiding their true identity.

Facebook will add more transparency of “issue-based” political ad funding.

The firm will ask those placing political ads for a US government-issued ID and a physical mailing address. A unique code will be sent to address - and will need to be input before the advertising is allowed to run.

The measures are to counter some of the tactics apparently used by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian “troll farm” said to have manipulated Facebook in order to target American voters.

One of the group’s most effective techniques was to set up pages that appeared to be run by passionate US-based campaigners. In some cases, these pages successfully encouraged people to take to the streets and engage in protests.

A spokeswoman told the BBC that Facebook had not finalised what would qualify as a large page, but that it would include other indicators as well as simply the number of followers a page has.

It will also make it clear if the page has changed its name. It is understood Russian trolls used innocuous titles to attract followers to a page, only to then switch the page into promoting a political view.

Facebook already verifies the identity of celebrities and other public figures, and the system for verifying page owners will likely work a similar way, the spokeswoman said.

The changes have been announced ahead of a critical week for Facebook. On Tuesday, Mr Zuckerberg will begin a round of Congressional hearings into Facebook’s handling of data and other issues.

It will be the first time the 33-year-old has personally appeared to represent the social network he founded, and comes following intense pressure to do so. Likely on the minds of senators and representatives will be the extent to which Facebook is able to prevent attempts to manipulate voters in the future.

In October 2017, the firm began forcing those placing ads to support specific candidates to make it clear who was funding that promotion.

“We're extending that requirement to anyone that wants to show 'issue ads’ - like political topics that are being debated across the country,” the company said.

"We are working with third parties to develop a list of key issues, which we will refine over time. To get authorised by Facebook, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location.

"Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads - electoral or issue-based - until they are authorised."

Perhaps foreshadowing Mr Zuckerberg’s response to politicians next week, the statement admitted this system would not solve the problem entirely.

"We know we were slow to pick-up foreign interference in the 2016 US elections.

"Today's updates are designed to prevent future abuse in elections - and to help ensure you have the information that you need to assess political and issue ads, as well as content on Pages.

"By increasing transparency around ads and Pages on Facebook, we can increase accountability for advertisers — improving our service for everyone." </s> Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Facebook will start verifying the identities of people running popular pages on its platform

Facebook will verify the identity of people running popular pages, as part of its continued efforts to stem fake news and propaganda.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said all “large” pages would be audited - any which did not clear the process would be prevented from posting.

The move is designed to prevent users who run pages using fake accounts from hiding their true identity.

Mr Zuckerberg said he backed proposed political ads regulation.

It would require technology companies to collect more data on the source of those advertisements.

"Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform," he wrote.

"And that's why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

Also announced today, Facebook will add more transparency over the funding of "issue-based" political ads.

"These steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system," Mr Zuckerberg said.

"But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads."

Russian manipulation

The firm will ask those placing political ads for a US government-issued ID and a physical mailing address. A unique code will be sent to the address - and will need to be inputted before the advertising is allowed to run.

The measures are to counter some of the tactics apparently used by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian “troll farm” said to have manipulated Facebook in order to target American voters.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has endorsed calls for more legislation on political ads

One of the group’s most effective techniques was to set up pages that appeared to be run by passionate US-based campaigners. In some cases, these pages successfully encouraged people to take to the streets and engage in protests.

A spokeswoman told the BBC that Facebook had not finalised what would qualify as a large page, but that it would include other indicators as well as simply the number of followers a page has.

It will also make it clear if the page has changed its name. It is understood Russian trolls used innocuous titles to attract followers to a page, only to then switch the page into promoting a political view.

Facebook already verifies the identity of celebrities and other public figures, and the system for verifying page owners will likely work a similar way, the spokeswoman said.

Crunch hearings

The changes have been announced ahead of a critical week for Facebook. On Tuesday, Mr Zuckerberg will begin a round of Congressional hearings into Facebook’s handling of data and other issues.

It will be the first time the 33-year-old has personally appeared to represent the social network he founded, and comes following intense pressure to do so. Likely on the minds of senators and representatives will be the extent to which Facebook is able to prevent attempts to manipulate voters in the future.

In October 2017, the company began forcing those placing ads to support specific candidates to make it clear who was funding that promotion.

“We're extending that requirement to anyone that wants to show 'issue ads’ - like political topics that are being debated across the country,” the company said.

"We are working with third parties to develop a list of key issues, which we will refine over time. To get authorised by Facebook, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location.

"Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads - electoral or issue-based - until they are authorised."

Perhaps foreshadowing Mr Zuckerberg’s response to politicians next week, the statement admitted this system would not solve the problem entirely.

"We know we were slow to pick-up foreign interference in the 2016 US elections.

"Today's updates are designed to prevent future abuse in elections - and to help ensure you have the information that you need to assess political and issue ads, as well as content on pages.

"By increasing transparency around ads and pages on Facebook, we can increase accountability for advertisers — improving our service for everyone." </s> Facebook announced a slew of changes on Friday to increase transparency on who is allowed to purchase political advertisements on its platform.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post that anyone who seeks to purchase a political or “issue ad” on the social network will need to verify who they are and where they are from. Zuckerberg says this action was necessary to ensure fairer elections around the globe in the next year, including the November midterm elections in the United States.

This verification process will begin in the United States and expand into other countries in the near future, according to Zuckerberg. Facebook broadly defined an “issue ad” as those on hot topic political topics and will work with third parties to develop a list of these issues.

“With important elections coming up in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and more countries in the next year, one of my top priorities for 2018 is making sure we support positive discourse and prevent interference in these elections,” wrote Zuckerberg. “To get verified, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads.”

Facebook will also highlight political advertisements as such to avoid confusion in the News Feed. On top of every political advertisement, Facebook will label ads as “Political Ad” on the top left corner of the post and show who paid for it. This feature will roll out in the United States later in the spring.

Facebook says that in Canada, it has been testing a new feature that allows users to see what ads a Page — a public profile specifically created for businesses, brands and organizations — is running. The company plans to launch this feature, called “view ads,” globally by June.

Facebook’s new verification process will also account for managers of Pages with a large user base. Managers will need to verify who they are and where they are from to be able to post content on their Page.

“This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way,” wrote Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg and Facebook have been churning out new changes to Facebook’s data practices this week — right before Zuckerberg’s scheduled testimony in front of Congress next week. Facebook announced updates to its data policy and proposed updates — subject to user feedback — on its terms of service earlier this week.

In a statement on Wednesday that revealed up to 87 million Facebook users’ information may have been improperly collected by political data firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook announced more changes in better protecting user profiles from being targeted and scraped.
• After Mark Zuckerberg’s messages disappear, Facebook says ‘unsend’ feature coming to all users
• Mark Zuckerberg’s congresswoman: “Facebook’s platform was weaponized to do damage to our democracy” Starting at the end of October last year, Facebook (and Google and Twitter) testified in front of Congress about possible Russian election meddling enabled by their platforms. In February, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged a Russian troll farm — which spread disinformation and fake ads around the time of the 2016 election and beyond — with election interference. </s> Facebook announced a slew of changes on Friday to increase transparency on who is allowed to purchase political advertisements on its platform.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post that anyone who seeks to purchase a political or “issue ad” on the social network will need to verify who they are and where they are from. Zuckerberg says this action was necessary to ensure fairer elections around the globe in the next year, including the November midterm elections in the United States.

This verification process will begin in the United States and expand into other countries in the near future, according to Zuckerberg. Facebook broadly defined an “issue ad” as those on hot topic political topics and will work with third parties to develop a list of these issues.

“With important elections coming up in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and more countries in the next year, one of my top priorities for 2018 is making sure we support positive discourse and prevent interference in these elections,” wrote Zuckerberg. “To get verified, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads.”

Facebook will also highlight political advertisements as such to avoid confusion in the News Feed. On top of every political advertisement, Facebook will label ads as “Political Ad” on the top left corner of the post and show who paid for it. This feature will roll out in the United States later in the spring.

Facebook says that in Canada, it has been testing a new feature that allows users to see what ads a Page — a public profile specifically created for businesses, brands and organizations — is running. The company plans to launch this feature, called “view ads,” globally by June.

Facebook’s new verification process will also account for managers of Pages with a large user base. Managers will need to verify who they are and where they are from to be able to post content on their Page.

“This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way,” wrote Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg and Facebook have been churning out new changes to Facebook’s data practices this week — right before Zuckerberg’s scheduled testimony in front of Congress next week. Facebook announced updates to its data policy and proposed updates — subject to user feedback — on its terms of service earlier this week.

In a statement on Wednesday that revealed up to 87 million Facebook users’ information may have been improperly collected by political data firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook announced more changes in better protecting user profiles from being targeted and scraped.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s congresswoman: “Facebook’s platform was weaponized to do damage to our democracy” Starting at the end of October last year, Facebook (and Google and Twitter) testified in front of Congress about possible Russian election meddling enabled by their platforms. In February, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged a Russian troll farm — which spread disinformation and fake ads around the time of the 2016 election and beyond — with election interference. </s> Facebook announced Friday that it is introducing new rules for Facebook Pages — rules that, had they been in place earlier, could have stopped Russian trolls posing as Americans from wreaking havoc on the platform in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Unlike Facebook profiles, Facebook Pages can essentially be run anonymously. Pages can gather millions of followers without Facebook users ever knowing who runs them.

But now, the company said Friday, people who run pages with "large numbers of followers" will need to be verified.

"This will make it much harder for people to administer a Page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies," the company said.

The company didn't say what qualified as a large number, nor did it say if Facebook users would be able to see who runs pages with a big following.

Related: Kremlin ties to pages deleted by Facebook should have been obvious months ago

For years, the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll group, ran pages meant to look like they were created by American activists from all over the political spectrum. Some of the pages amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. One, Blacktivist, a fake Black Lives Matter page, had more followers than the movement's official page.

In theory, had Facebook's proposed rules been in place in 2016, the social media company would have sought to verify the identity and location of the person running the Blacktivist page.

If Facebook found that the profile behind the page was fake -- using a stolen identity for instance -- the people controlling that profile would no longer be able to post on the page.

What's not clear from Friday's announcement is whether proving you're a real person is enough to pass Facebook's litmus test. Is it going to be against Facebook policy to run a Black Lives Matter page if you're a Russian living in St. Petersburg, for instance? Facebook hasn't said.

Facebook did not provide any additional clarity when asked by CNN, but said it was working on the authorization process and plan to roll it out later this year.

Writing about the new rules on Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckbrberg acknowledged, "these steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system. But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did."

And there are potential downsides to this change. Anonymity online allowed Russian trolls to run fake Facebook pages for nefarious purposes, but anonymity also gives people the opportunity to speak out and organize who otherwise may not feel comfortable doing so.

People living in totalitarian countries where dissent can be dangerous, for instance, or workers in the U.S. who want to organize around a cause that their employer doesn't support, might be less inclined to use Facebook to do so if they know they have to reveal their identity to someone, even if it is just Facebook.

The move could have a chilling effect on activism, Micah White, one of the founders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, told CNN on Friday.

"American activism is being pinched on both sides. On the one hand Russian infiltration that delegitimizes protests and on the other hand by efforts by social media companies to make their networks less useable for social protests," he said.

The solutions to the platform's problems are often complicated, with similar potential downsides even for much-needed fixes.

Earlier this week, CNN reported that the Internet Research Agency connections of some pages Facebook just removed on Tuesday should have been obvious months ago. But Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, told CNN that the question of when to delete such pages is a complicated one.

Comparing it to a law enforcement sting, Gleicher said that if the company were to remove each individual page as its ties to the Internet Research Agency were confirmed, it would risk tipping off the troll group off and giving it a chance to try to obscure its connection to other accounts it might be running. </s> (Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. has identified an ongoing effort to influence the U.S. midterm elections, using inauthentic accounts and pages on the social network.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this,” Facebook said Tuesday in a blog post. “It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency has in the past.”

The company has stepped up its work to ferret out fake accounts after a Russian-backed effort sowed discord among Americans during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook and other social media networks have been criticized by lawmakers for failing to recognize and take steps to stop those efforts.

Facebook said that starting last week, it identified eight pages and 17 profiles on its main social network, and seven accounts on Instagram, that violated its rules. It shared the findings with U.S. law enforcement, Congress, and other technology companies. The company said it was letting the public know ahead of a real protest the fake accounts had planned and coordinated in the nation’s capital for next week.

The discovery of the election-interference campaign was earlier reported by the New York Times. </s> Facebook is finally rolling out its fake news identification tools, starting in Germany. Seeing as it’s currently facing two lawsuits in the country, the social network’s decision to start its cleanup of bogus content outside of the U.S. is no coincidence.

In an announcement on its Newsroom blog, Facebook manager of journalism partnerships Áine Kerr states the tools will begin rolling out in Germany in the next few weeks.

More: This new fake news search engine tracks webs of web rumors

Facebook unveiled its fake news-oriented updates in December, following a mounting backlash blaming the spread of misleading and hyper-partisan content on its site for “swaying” the U.S. election. The company’s new tools rely on its algorithms, user reporting, and third-party fact checking organizations that are signatories of .

Kerr states that one of the external organizations aiding Facebook is Correctiv (a German investigative journalism non-profit) — more groups will be added to the list once they are accepted into Poynter’s program. Correctiv’s managing director, David Schraven, told German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung his non-profit first met with Facebook to discuss fake news in fall of last year. Schraven adds that the “litmus test” for his organization will be to monitor news on Facebook relating to the regional election in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, in May. Correctiv’s team of 25 employees will analyze both popular news stories that perpetuate “propaganda lies” and individual content uploaded by users. Referring to the latter, Schraven adds: “Fictitious stories of crimes are probably the most important type of fake news on Facebook.”

Earlier on Sunday, BuzzFeed reported that misleading articles and conspiracy theories are among the most popular type of content on social platforms in Germany. It found that misleading stories relating to German Chancellor Angela Merkel are generating tens of thousands of comments, shares, and likes in the lead-up to the federal elections, due to take place later this year.

One of the alleged victims of fake news in Germany is currently suing Facebook. The defamation lawsuit filed by 19-year-old Syrian refugee Anas Modamani claims Facebook failed to take down a series of posts linking him to violent attacks, including Brussels Airport bombing of March 2016. The case comes in the wake of the comments made by German Justice Minister Heiko Maas urging state prosecutors to crack down on the spread of “malicious gossip” and “defamation” online.

“Facebook is earning an awful lot of money with fake news,” Maas told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag last month. “A company that earns billions from the internet also has a social responsibility. Prosecutable defamation must be deleted immediately, once reported. It needs to be made easier for users to report fake news.”

Facebook also faces a separate lawsuit that alleges the company has ignored the dissemination of hate speech on its site, in violation of German laws. </s> Social media giant says it has taken steps to fix the security problem and alerted law enforcement

Facebook says it recently discovered a security breach affecting nearly 50 million user accounts.

The hack is the latest setback for Facebook during a year of tumult for the global social media service.

In a blog post , the company says hackers exploited a bug that affected its “View As” feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to someone else. That would let attackers steal the “access tokens” Facebook uses to keep people logged in. Possession of those tokens would allow attackers to “seize control” of user accounts, Facebook said.

Facebook says it has taken steps to fix the security problem and alerted law enforcement.

To deal with the issue, Facebook reset some logins, so 90 million people have been logged out and will have to log in again. That includes anyone who has been subject to a “View As” lookup in the past year.

Facebook says it doesn’t know who is behind the attacks or where they’re based. In a call with reporters on Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company doesn’t know yet if any of the accounts that were hacked were misused.

Jake Williams, a security expert at Rendition Infosec, said the stolen access tokens would have likely allowed attackers to view private posts and probably post status updates or shared posts as the compromised user, but wouldn’t affect passwords.

“The bigger concern (and something we don’t know yet) is whether third party applications were impacted,” Williams said in a text exchange. “Facebook offers a login service for third parties to allow users to log into their apps using Facebook. In other words, Facebook is providing the identity management for countless other sites and services. These access tokens that were stolen show when a user is logged into Facebook and that may be enough to access a user’s account on a third party site.

News broke early this year that data analytics firm that once worked for the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had gained access to personal data from millions of user profiles. Then a congressional investigation found that agents from Russia and other countries have been posting fake political ads since at least 2016. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at a Congressional hearing over Facebook’s privacy policies in April.

Facebook has more than 2 billion users worldwide. The company said people do not need to change their Facebook passwords, but anyone having trouble logging on should visit the site’s help centre . Those who want to log out can visit the “Security and Login” section of their settings, which lists the places that people are logged into Facebook. It has a one-click option of logging out of all locations.

Ed Mierzwinski, the senior director of consumer advocacy group U.S. PIRG, said the breach was “very troubling.”

“It’s yet another warning that Congress must not enact any national data security or data breach legislation that weakens current state privacy laws, preempts the rights of states to pass new laws that protect their consumers better, or denies their attorneys general rights to investigate violations of or enforce those laws,” he said in a statement.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said “the most important point is that we found out from them,” meaning Facebook, as opposed to a third party.

“As a user, I want Facebook to proactively protect my data and let me know when it’s compromised,” he said. “Shareholders should ultimately approve of Facebook’s handling of the issue.”

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. </s> (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has identified a new coordinated political influence campaign to mislead users and organize rallies ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections, taking down dozens of fake accounts on its site, the company said on Tuesday.

A Russian propaganda arm tried to tamper in the 2016 U.S. election by posting and buying ads on Facebook, according to the company and U.S. intelligence agencies. Moscow has denied involvement.

Facebook on Tuesday said here had it removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram, part of an effort to combat foreign meddling in U.S. elections, attempts that lawmakers have called dangerous for democracy.

The company said it was still in the early stages of its investigation and did not yet know who may be behind the influence campaign for 2018 elections that will determine whether or not the Republican Party keeps control of Congress.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on a call with reporters that the attempts to manipulate public opinion would likely become more sophisticated to evade Facebook’s scrutiny, calling it an “arms race.”

“This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing,” the company said in a blogpost.

More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and that about $11,000 had been spent on about 150 ads, Facebook said. The pages had created about 30 events since May 2017.

Facebook for months has been on the defensive about influence activity on its site and concerns over user privacy tied to longstanding agreements with developers that allowed them access to private user data.

Facebook identified influence activity around at least two issues, including a counter-protest to a “Unite the Right II” rally set next week in Washington. The other was the #AbolishICE social media campaign aimed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In the blogpost, Facebook said it was revealing the influence effort now in part because of the rally. A previous event last year in Charlottesville, South Carolina, led to violence by white supremacists.

Facebook said it would tell users who had expressed interest in the counter-protest what action it had taken and why.

Facebook officials on a call with reporters said that one known account from Russia’s Internet Research Agency was a co-administrator of one of the fake pages for seven minutes, but the company did not believe that was enough evidence to attribute the campaign to the Russian government.

The company previously had said 126 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed political content on Facebook over a two-year period, and that 16 million may have been exposed to Russian information on Instagram.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, in a statement urged Facebook to move against foreign groups trying to sway American voters and to warn legitimate users that such activity, as seen in 2016, is recurring this year.

“Today’s announcement from Facebook demonstrates what we’ve long feared: that malicious foreign actors bearing the hallmarks of previously-identified Russian influence campaigns continue to abuse and weaponize social media platforms to influence the U.S. electorate,” Schiff said.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, said in a statement there would be a hearing on Wednesday about the online threat to U.S. election security.

Burr said the goal of influence operations “is to sow discord, distrust, and division in an attempt to undermine public faith in our institutions and our political system. The Russians want a weak America.”

Washington imposed punitive sanctions on Russia following U.S. intelligence agency conclusions that Moscow interfered to undermine the 2016 U.S. elections, one of the reasons U.S.-Russian relations are at a post-Cold War low. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have said, however, that they want to improve ties between the two nuclear powers.

Facebook disclosed in September that Russians under fake names had used the social network to try to influence U.S. voters in the months before and after the 2016 election, writing about divisive issues, setting up events and buying ads.

U.S. intelligence agencies said Russian state operators ran the campaign combining fake social media posts and hacking into Democratic Party networks, eventually becoming an effort to help Republican candidate Trump, who scored a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Over the past several months, the company has taken steps meant to reassure U.S. and European lawmakers that further regulation is unnecessary. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg says the company has 20,000 people working to police and protect the site.

Costs associated with that effort are part of the reason Facebook said last week that it expects its profit margins to decline, a warning that sent shares tumbling about 25 percent, the biggest one-day loss of market cap in U.S. stock market history. Shares of Facebook were up about 1.5 percent in Tuesday’s midafternoon trading, part of a broader tech rebound.
Facebook states that people running popular pages will now have to verify their identity as part of its continued efforts to stem fake news and propaganda.