Social networking site Facebook has taken down hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups after discovering they were linked to an online syndicate accused of spreading hate speech and fake news.
Indonesian police uncovered the existence of the group, called Saracen, in 2016 and arrested three of its members on suspicion of being part of a syndicate being paid to spread incendiary material online through social media.
“These accounts and pages were actively working to conceal what they were doing and were linked to the Saracen Group, an online syndicate in Indonesia,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of Cybersecurity Policy, said on Friday.
“They have used deceptive messaging and… networks of concealed pages and accounts to drive often divisive narratives over key issues of public debates in Indonesia.”
Facebook has been under pressure from regulators around the globe to fight the spread of misinformation on its platform.
In January, it announced two new regional operations centers focused on monitoring election-related content in its Dublin and Singapore offices.
Indonesia is currently in the run-up to a presidential election set to take place in April, with internet watchdogs flagging the impact of fake news as a concern.
Indonesia is estimated to be Facebook’s third largest markets, with over 100 million users.
Indonesia’s police cyber crime unit has previously told Reuters that Saracen was posting material involving religious and ethnic issues, as well as fake news and posts that defamed government officials.
The country has an ethnically diverse population of 260 million people, with a big majority of Muslims but with significant religious minorities, and ensuring unity across the archipelago has been a priority of governments.
Gleicher said Facebook’s investigation found Saracen agents would target and compromise accounts, but stressed the removal of the accounts was due to “coordinated deceptive behaviour (by Saracen)… not due to the content they had shared”.
The pages and accounts deleted had 170,000 followers on Facebook and more than 65,000 on Instagram, but the reach of the people exposed to the content is believed to be higher.
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