Facebook blocking bogus accounts, monitoring abuse to combat fake news

Social media giant Facebook has said that it has initiated a series of measures, including blocking fake accounts to combat fake news, proactively monitor abuse and increase advertisement transparency as part of its efforts to prevent outsiders' interference in any general elections across the world.

Facebook has been facing criticism for helping to spur violence and for its policies surrounding misinformation in general.

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Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, had to face grilling in the US and in the European parliament over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook was accused of unduly influencing the 2016 US electoral process.

The social media giant has done some work in the first half of this year to combat fake news all around the world like in Italy, Colombia, Turkey, and even the primaries for US midterms. By the end of the year it will have focused on more than 50 national elections all around the world, Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's head of the civic engagement, said.

Using machine learning Facebook has gotten more effective at either blocking, or quickly removing fake accounts.