Special Advicer to the President on Media, Lauretta Onochie have described PUNCH as a “Punk Newspaper” following a contradictory report of accounts closed by Facebook.

In a blog post, Facebook said it had removed 265 social media accounts that originated in Israel and focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, along with “some activity” in Latin America and South East Asia.

This people according to Facebook used fake accounts to run pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement.

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“They also represented themselves as locals, including local news organisations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians,” says  Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook

The people behind the phantom accounts spent around $812,000 (£634,941) for ads between December 2012 and April 2019, Facebook said, and these were paid for in Brazilian reais, Israeli shekel and US dollars.

Five of the six African countries targeted have had elections since 2016, and Tunisia will hold national polls later this year.

Facebook has faced increasing criticism for failing to eradicate misinformation that could affect the way people vote in elections.

PUNCH on the other hand reported it, with headline stating, “Facebook closes pro-Buhari accounts used against Atiku’s campaign”. 

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This Mrs. Onochie believes is a media attack by opposition party through the revered publisher.

One of the pages that Facebook cancelled appeared filled with viral misinformation attacking Atiku, a former Vice President.
The report further read, “The page’s banner image showed Abubakar as Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, holding up a sign reading, ‘Make Nigeria Worse Again’. – Punch