By Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy
Today we banned a digital marketing group in the Philippines — Twinmark Media Enterprises and all its subsidiaries — from Facebook. This organization has repeatedly violated our misrepresentation and spam 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. We do not want our services to be used for this type of behavior, nor do we want the group to be able to reestablish a presence on Facebook.
Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve removed as part of this ban:
- Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 220 Facebook Pages; 73 Facebook accounts; 29 Instagram accounts
- Followers: About 43 million accounts followed at least one of these Facebook Pages
- Facebook Pages with highest number of followers:
- Filipino Channel Online: 10.4 million
- Gorgeous Me: 5.7 million
- Unhappy: 4.9 million
- Text Message: 4.4 million
- TNP Media: 4.3 million
Again, our decision to remove this organization, and the Pages and accounts it controls, is based on the behavior of these actors who repeatedly violated our misrepresentation and spam policies, rather than on the type of content they were posting.
This specific investigation began after we learned that Twinmark was selling admin rights to Facebook Pages it had created, in order to increase distribution and generate profit, which violates our 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.
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. Today’s announcement is just one of the many steps we have taken to prevent bad actors from abusing our platform. 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.
Content Examples
Below is a selection of Pages and posts we have taken down as part of this network, for violating our coordinated inauthentic behavior and spam policies.
The following two Pages are examples of where a Page name was changed after it had built up a large following, substantially changing the Page’s subject matter. This is in violation of our Page policies, as it misleads the Page’s followers.
The following news articles are examples of the posts being shared by the Pages within this network, in a coordinated way.
Post caption translation: “Ohhhhhhhh! So that’s how it is. For god’s sake!”
Post caption translation: “Wow 😮 is this the fruit of her diligence and perseverance? How beautiful – you won’t think that at her age she’d have such a beautiful house.”
Headline translation: ”[Redacted name] shows her new house that she worked so hard for”
Post caption translation: “[Redacted name]’s new car is fabulous, and it was given to him by this person?”
Headline translation: “[Redacted name] reveals who gave her son, [Redacted name], his first car…”