A total of 148 accounts and pages in Bangladesh have been removed from Facebook, Meta, the parent company of this social media, said in their first quarter report of this year. Fifty of these are Facebook accounts.
According to the report, Meta’s investigations into these fake accounts and pages have found links to people associated with Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League and its research institute, the Center for Research and Information (CRI).
CRI is a research institute of Awami League. The organization says on its website that its mission is to create a platform for public discussion of Bangladesh’s national policies on important issues. For this, their various initiatives including high quality research are mentioned on the website.
However, Prime Minister’s special assistant Biplab Baruya rejected the report saying, ‘It is a politically biased and one-sided report, which cannot be expected from an organization like Facebook.’
He said, ‘They can remove any account or page that violates the policy. But linking Awami League and CRI with it is probably part of the ongoing international conspiracy to tarnish the reputation with various biased reports. Facebook should analyze the political identity of those through whom Facebook has taken information.
Private University Ulab professor and Factwatch editor Dr. Sumon Rahman says that governments around the world try to use social media as their own propaganda machines, and Bangladesh is no exception.
He also said, ‘But this is part of Facebook’s regular activities. If there is something hateful or hurtful, it increases stress. Many times even at the request of the authorities, they remove such content or accounts or pages.
What else the Meta report says
Meta said in its report, ‘We have removed fifty accounts and 98 pages from Facebook for consistent untrustworthy behavior. This network belongs to Bangladesh and they targeted the local audience of Bangladesh.’
These accounts and pages had a total of about 3.4 million followers. At the same time, about 60 dollars worth of money has been spent on advertising from these pages.
Some of those behind such activities using fake accounts have been identified and neutralized by the automated system before being investigated. They used such accounts to post content or run pages.
Some of these pages used fictitious new identities and others used the names of Bangladeshi news media. Some pages used BNP’s name and posted anti-BNP content.
According to the report, the network of these fake accounts and pages are on multiple platforms including YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Telegram and their own websites.
This network initially posted content in Bengali. However, news and current affairs of Bangladesh were also published in English.
Among these incidents were elections, criticism of BNP, allegations of corruption against BNP and party’s role in pre-election violence, party’s role in technological development of Bangladesh.
Meta said in the report, ‘We found these suspicious and unreliable additional activities as a result of internal investigations, which we removed last year. We were able to uncover a network of coordinated untrustworthy behavior, which this report describes.’
It also said, ‘Although the people behind them have tried to keep their identities and coordination secret, our investigation has revealed that those involved in these are linked to the Awami League and the non-profit organization Center for Research and Information.’
Dr. Suman Rahman says Facebook may have confirmed the source of fake pages or accounts using algorithms or fact checking or some other channel.
He added, ‘They can track it if they want. Not a very complicated matter. And this is not a new activity for Facebook. Rather, they do so in many countries to stop the spread of hatred or to prevent harm. And it is also true that governments everywhere want to use social media as a propaganda machine.’
Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Biplab Barua has strongly criticized the issues that Awami League and CRI have talked about in the ‘report is one-sided and politically biased’ report. Barua is also the office secretary of Awami League.
He said, ‘Accounts and pages abroad where misinformation is spread against Bangladesh or the character of senior Awami League leaders, including the prime minister, have not been mentioned in the report. Facebook did not say what it did to the bamboo fort.
‘This is a politically biased and biased report. Those through whom Facebook has investigated or collected information should be investigated for their political identity. I didn’t expect this from a company like Facebook.’
Biplab Barua said they think that Awami League and its leaders have suffered the most damage due to misinformation and disinformation on social media including Facebook.
He said, ‘But they have tried to question Awami League and CRI. We reject this report. Awami League and CRI never spread false propaganda against anyone. This is a completely politically biased one-sided report.’
The manner in which the content is removed
is in view of the twelfth parliamentary elections of Bangladesh, in August last year Meta officials came to Dhaka and met with the officials of the Election Commission.
Later, in response to BBC Bangla’s e-mail, it was reported what steps are being taken on meta platforms including Facebook to deal with meta rumors and against harmful content. At the time, Meta said they work with more than 90 organizations around the world to prevent rumours.
Organizations they work with in Bangladesh include FactWatch, AFP and Boom Bangladesh.
Meta said at the time that along with the content spreading the rumours, the accounts from which the rumors were spread were also deleted. And after a rumor spreads about a topic, links to accurate news or posts related to that event are more widely circulated so that users can get accurate information about that particular topic.
According to Meta, there are many people creating content that they are aware of, using various techniques to circumvent their platform’s rules.
They are constantly developing their artificial intelligence systems and working with civil society, law enforcement and the Election Commission to prevent such incidents, Meta’s statement said.