Facebook took down 289 pages connected to Russian news website

Facebook removed pages linked to Russian Sputnik news website for having breached the platform’s terms of services. The pages mispresented their identities, pretending they were independent news services or fan pages related to celebrities, regions and food. Facebook found out that at least 75 accounts belonged to Sputnik’s employees and often had posts with anti-Nato, protest and anti-corruption content among pictures of chocolate cakes, food recipes and cats. The platform suspect that it was a strategy to attract an audience interested in this type of content. Not rarely, these pages would post a link to a Sputnik article. The pages had around 700,000 followers. Facebook has struggled to remove illegal content and pages which violate its terms of services after having been charged liable for illegal political ads and content in the last American presidential elections.