Facebook Removes Pages From Russia-Associated Viral Video Firm

Facebook’s onslaught on Russia-connected accounts has typically taken down outlets with a comparatively tiny presence, but its newest decision is more considerable. The social media behemoth has removed 3 Pages from Maffick Media, a viral video outlet that has grabbed 30 Million views in a less period of time, over a shortage of revelation. Maffick is majority-controlled by Ruptly, an arm of the Russia-supported outlet RT, but did not mention this on any of its Pages, comprising politically slanted ones such as Backthen and Soapbox. Facebook does not formally need disclosure for parent companies Pages like it does for political advertisements, but a spokesperson claimed to the media that it might ask for revelation as fraction of an effort to offer users “more data related to the Pages they follow.”

“People linking with Pages should not be misled about who is controlling them,” the spokesperson claimed to the media in an interview. J. Ray Sparks (Maffick COO) has insisted that his firm is editorially self-sufficient of RT, and that it was “normal business practice” to leave the name of parent firm out of a Page.

On a related note, Facebook earlier accepted that its engineers had alerted suspicious activity by Russia as early as 2014. This is long before it became public. On the other hand, the firm did not confirm due to lack of proof of a coordinated campaign. The disclosure follows as the British Parliament conducted hearings with lawmakers from 9 nations into how Facebook was being employed to influence primary election results. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, declined to be present at the meeting.

Zuckerberg’s firms is stumbling from a series of scams connected to its handling of supposed Russian interference in both the US presidential election of 2016 and British referendum of same year’s on leaving the EU.