The Patriot Institute of Journalism and Arts (PIJA), Lance Magazine is a public-centric independent media organisation dedicated to fighting injustice, fostering social justice and community development through the telling and retelling of the marginalised-oriented stories.
No fewer than 46 United Bank for Africa (UBA) Facebook pages have been spotted to be fake, the PIJAlance Research and Investigations Desk found.
Two of the 46 pages positioned as the original page, representing the UBA’s LEO, which is a verified virtual AI Assistant dedicated to solve customers’ queries, are very active.
One of the page with the name, Leo UBA Bank Chatting App, has over 11 thousand followers and is currently replying chats and requesting users information in the name of solving their queries when messaged.
Chatting with it, our RID team found that the reply was AI-powered, automated and was instantaneous, more like the original UBA Facebook page for Leo.
The second page with the name, Leo Assistant Customer Service, has over 400 followers and is still running ads on Facebook to gather more followers. It was just created in February.
PIJAlance contacted, UBA executive said both pages are not the financial company’s pages or its backup pages. This single statement validate the inauthenticity of the page and redound the imminent danger ahead for users who fail to discover its differences.
In fact, this cast more distress to the existing comments and serious debates that Meta might be subconsciously aidding and abetting scammers on social media to thrive on their predatory attacks. While social media platforms are incorrigibly inseparable with scammers, nowadays, Meta’s fight against scammers, fake or impersonating accounts or pages are not direct and severe.
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Last year, FBI warned that murderers tailed pregnant women on Facebook with the intention to murder. Similar and more grievous stories were reported by PIJAlance last year.
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Our outlet had also reported that Facebook might be helping scammers thrive while ‘inadvertently’ censoring the ‘fighters’ against them. PIJAlance arrived at this thought, when Facebook banned its url for reporting carnal activity of a Bishop which was the truth (the evidence, still remains with us). It was not until a year after rigorous and persistent chats with Meta Business Team, that the URL was unbanned.
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A similar occurrence has been reported with the famous Nigerian Investigative Journalist, Fisayo Soyombo. His account is currently under Facebook’s shadow-banning cage for reporting a corrupt system of Shell Company in the medical case of a young boy.
Meta said it has identified over 1.3 billion scams perpetrated on Facebook. But its ways of reducing them, have also been hijacked by scammers to censor those working to bring them down.
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Facebook algorithms are currently wired to flag any account reported by a user or users as offensive or spam. Facebook does not seems to have a code in place to verify information received before processing it as fact and levelling the punishments, it deemed, immediately. So, if the truth is maliciously reported as spam by a user who is guilty, then, Facebook algorithm will affirm the report by banning such account or post for days, months or permanently.
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Enoch Oyedibu
Neck-deep Investigative Journalist, Fact-checker and writer-I provide support for marginalised communities through strategic investigative reporting, holding power to account and airing the underrepresented communities' concerns. I firmly believe in giving voices to the underreported communities in Nigeria and Africa. This has, however, made me contribute to multiple publications and projects that exposed corruption, injustice, and human rights violations. I am passionate about journalism and its role in creating positive change in the world. I lead a group of professional investigators at the PIJAlance Magazine Research and Investigations Desk (RID). If you have a story, check 'contact us' to hit me.
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