The networks were found to be sharing inauthentic content that was reportedly intended to spread politically divisive rhetoric, including anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-feminist and anti-Islam propaganda. While the networks had almost 1.7 million followers total and had around 7.4 million interactions in the last three months, Facebook didn’t pick up on the fake activity, according to an activist non-profit, Avaaz, which discovered the networks and reported it to the social media giant earlier this month. Avaaz said that Facebook has now removed the networks. (TechCrunch)

Talking point: While Avaaz used a Facebook-owned social media monitoring tool called Crowdtangle to analyze the impacts of these networks, the organization’s findings indicate a blindspot in Facebook’s ability to monitor its platform for fake news leading up to Spain’s election. With a Canadian federal election coming up in October 2019, Facebook Canada is building an ad library tool which archives political advertising and will give the public access to view ads by political parties, candidates and other groups. In January, the federal government announced that it would spend $7 million to fight disinformation online ahead of the election.