Facebook removes hundreds of pages and accounts that spread fake news

Facebook just took a rare step in its fight against fake news.

The company removed hundreds of pages and accounts that intentionally spammed users with fake news and misleading information in a "coordinated" effort, Facebook reported.

In a statement Thursday, Facebook said the removed accounts had "consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior."

The purge of 559 pages and 251accounts is the largest such removal of accounts and pages operated within the United States, according to The New York Times. Facebook has previously removed accounts involved in similar influence campaigns, but they were operated from outside of the U.S.

The accounts Facebook removed reportedly encompassed both ends of the political spectrum. One account, called "Right Wing News," had more than 3 million followers, while an account called "the Resistance," had 240,000 followers, according to The New York Times.

Importantly, the mere fact that these accounts were sharing false or inflammatory news isn't what got them banned. Facebook doesn't have explicit rules against sharing false information, even though it attempts to down-rank those posts in News Feed.

What did get these accounts banned were the shady tactics they used to artificially amplify their posts.

"Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites. Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was. Others were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate."

In other words: the people behind these pages and accounts were attempting to game Facebook's system for their own gain.