Facebook on Friday introduced new measures to make it more difficult to run fake or compromised accounts on its platform. From now, the social media giant will demand authorization from its users managing pages with a large number of followers in the US.
“Now, people who manage these Pages will be asked to complete an authorization process in order to continue to post, making it harder for people to administer a Page using a fake or compromised account,” Facebook said in a blog post.
The authorization process will ask people who manage these pages to secure their account with two-factor authentication and confirm their primary country location.
“If a Page manager requires authorization, they’ll receive a notice at the top of their News Feed to begin the process. This should only take a few minutes to complete. People won’t be able to post on their Page if they don’t complete the process,” said the California-based company.
The measure will be enforced shortly this month.
Under the new process, people will now see more details in the Info and Ads section of pages.
“We’ll show when a Page has merged with another Page under Page History,” said the blog post, adding: “We’re also adding a section called People Who Manage This Page, which will surface the primary country locations Pages are managed from, initially appearing on Pages with a large US audience.”
Facebook will introduce similar features to its photo sharing platform Instagram too in the next few weeks, allowing people to see more information about accounts with large audiences.
“Our goal is to prevent organizations and individuals from creating accounts that mislead people about who they are or what they’re doing. These updates are part of our continued efforts to increase authenticity and transparency of Pages on our platform,” said the blog post.
After allegations of Russian meddling in 2016 US presidential elections using Facebook to influence voters, Facebook has launched several campaigns to prevent creation accounts on its platform that would mislead users.
Last week, Facebook deleted 32 pages and accounts from its platform and Instagram for being “involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior”. Its security unit has found a coordinated campaign on its platform aiming to exert political influence ahead of the US mid-term elections scheduled for November.