Facebook checks for impersonating accounts within friend circle
San Francisco, May 6: Facebook has admitted that it mostly looks for impostors -- who use a user's photo as their profile pictures -- only among friends and friends of friends, a media report said.
According to The Washington Post, Facebook said that it does compare profile photos against millions of other users', but it did not reveal a specific number.
"We use new technologies to protect people on Facebook and we are often able to improve as we roll them out," Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld said.
"In the early days of this feature, we are focused on alerting people to new and recent photos posted by their friends and friends of their friends. We hope to improve how we use this technology over time."
It also did not disclose how it chooses which accounts to compare against and sometimes it disables people's real accounts instead.
The social media giant recently launched "Face Recognition" feature that said that switching it on can "help protect you from strangers using a photo of you as their profile picture".
The company believes that there were as many as 87 million fake accounts as of last quarter, which is nearly five times as many as the 18 million fakes on the website back in 2016.
Facebook said the increase was due to "episodic spikes" in fake account creation in countries such as Indonesia, Turkey and Vietnam.
Although Facebook has done a lot of work in face recognition and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools as its weapons to combat political propaganda, hate speech and misinformation, the company was struggling to use the technology to connect real people around the world.
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Congress cites Maniben Patel's diary entries, asks Rajnath to apologise for Babri claim
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Saturday shared diary entries of Vallabhbhai Patel's daughter from a book to rebut Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's claim that India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted to build the Babri masjid using public funds, and demanded that Singh apologise for spreading "falsehoods".
Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, claimed the defence minister was spreading falsehoods to “improve his relationship” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Here is Maniben's original diary entry in Gujarati on pages 212-213 in the book ‘Samarpit Padchhayo Sardarno’ by CA R S Patel 'Aaresh', published by Sardar Patel Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial Society, 2025,” Ramesh said on X, sharing screenshots of the relevant pages from the book.
“There is a huge difference between what is contained in the original diary entry and what Rajnath Singh ji and his fellow ‘distorians’ are propagating,” Ramesh said.
“The Defence Minister must apologise for the falsehoods he is spreading, simply to improve his relationship with the PM,” he claimed.
The Congress had earlier termed Singh's claim that Nehru wanted to build the Babri masjid using public funds a “lie” and “WhatsApp university story”, and said the defence minister should not walk in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's path.
Addressing a gathering at Sadhli village in Gujarat's Vadodara district last Tuesday, Singh said Nehru wanted to build the Babri masjid using public funds, but Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel didn't allow his plans to succeed.
The BJP had cited a book by Vallabhbhai Patel's daughter to double down on Singh's claims, and said the first prime minister also said he felt "repelled" by some of the temples in south India despite their beauty.
“The source of what Rajnath Singh said is the 'Inside Story of Sardar Patel, Diary of Maniben Patel'," BJP Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi had said at a press conference at the party headquarters while responding to media queries on the issue.
Trivedi claimed that on Page 24 of the book, it is written that Nehru also raised the question of the Babri mosque, but Sardar Patel made it clear that the government could not spend any money on building a mosque.
