Facebook Inc on Wednesday said it has started weeding out bogus accounts by watching for suspicious behavior, such as repetitive posts or torrents of messages.
The security improvement was described as being part of a broader effort to rid the leading social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news by making sure people are who they claim to be.
“We’ve found that when people represent themselves on Facebook the same way they do in real life, they act responsibly,” Shabnam Shaik of the Facebook protect and care team said in a blog post. “Fake accounts don’t follow this pattern, and are closely related to the creation and spread of spam.”
Accounts suspected of being bogus are suspended and holders asked to verify identifies, which scammers typically do not do, the California-based social network said.
In France, the new tactic has already resulted in Facebook taking action against 30,000 accounts believed to be fakes, Shaik said.
“We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity — without assessing the content itself,” Shaik said. “With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”
Under pressure to stymie the spread of fake news, Facebook has taken a series of steps including making it easier to report such posts and harder to make money from them.
Facebook also modified its displays of trending topics to find stories faster, capture a broader range of news and help ensure that trends reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.
Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has sought to deflect criticism that the huge social network may have been used to fuel the spread of misinformation that affected last year’s US presidential race.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last