Facebook bans PH’s Twinmark Media Enterprises for violating misrepresentation, spam policies

A total of 220 Facebook pages, 73 Facebook accounts, and 29 Instagram accounts affiliated with Twinmark were taken down by Facebook. (Photo: Con Karampelas/Unsplash)

Social networking company Facebook said it has banned digital marketing group Twinmark Media Enterprises and all its subsidiaries from its platform for violating its misrepresentation and spam policies.

This was announced by Facebook’s head of Cybersecurity Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher on Friday, January 11.

In his statement, Gleicher said, Twinmark has “repeatedly” violated its policies “including through coordinated inauthentic behavior, the use of fake accounts, leading people to ad farms, and selling access to Facebook Pages to artificially increase distribution and generate profit.”

A total of 220 Facebook pages, 73 Facebook accounts, and 29 Instagram accounts affiliated with Twinmark were taken down by Facebook.

According to Gleicher, there were about 43 million accounts that followed at least one of the Facebook pages.

Some of those pages that have highest number followers were as follows: Filipino Channel Online with 10.4 million, Gorgeous Me with 5.7 million, Unhappy with 4.9 million, Text Message with 4.4 million, and TNP Media with 4.3 million.

Gleicher said Facebook conducted an investigation after they learned that Twinmark was “selling admin rights to Facebook Pages it had created, in order to increase distribution and generate profit,” violating Facebook’s spam policy.

“This prompted our teams to take a deeper look at a broader group of Pages and accounts associated with these users, ultimately uncovering a large network of Pages and accounts that were engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior, the use of fake accounts, leading people to ad farms and selling access to Facebook Pages,” he said.

He also noted that banning Twinmark from its platform is just one of the many steps they took to prevent users from “abusing” Facebook.

“We are continuously working to uncover this kind of abuse, and we know that the people behind it — whether economically or politically motivated — will continue to evolve their tactics,” he stressed.

“We will continue to invest heavily in safety and security in order to ensure that people can continue to trust the connections they make on Facebook,” he continued.

It can be recalled that last October, Facebook had shutdown a total of 95 online pages and 39 accounts in the Philippines for violating its spam and authenticity policies.

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