Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has intensified its campaign against inauthentic behaviour on its platforms, announcing the removal of over 10 million fake profiles and about 500,000 spam accounts in the first six months of 2025.

The company said the move is part of a broader initiative to combat impersonation, fake engagement and content duplication — a strategy aimed at prioritising originality and ensuring that genuine creators are more visible across the platform.

Meta explained that accounts found to be reposting or recycling content without permission or meaningful edits will face consequences, including reduced reach and loss of access to monetisation tools.

“We’re making progress. In the first half of 2025, we took action on around 500,000 accounts engaged in spammy behaviour or fake engagement. We also removed about 10 million profiles impersonating large content producers,” Meta said in a blog post on Monday.

READ ALSO:Falana Sues Meta For $5m Over Alleged Privacy Invasion

The company said repeated sharing of unoriginal content — including videos, photos, or text — diminishes the platform’s integrity by drowning out authentic voices and making it difficult for new creators to gain traction.

To support legitimate creators, Meta is rolling out new tools that automatically trace reposted content back to its original source. The company says this will help elevate authentic content and ensure credit goes to the rightful owners.

“Pages and profiles that post mostly original content tend to enjoy wider distribution across Facebook. Simply stitching clips together or adding a watermark will no longer count as meaningful editing. Content that provides real value and tells an authentic story is likely to perform better,” Meta stated.

The company also cautioned against uploading content that carries watermarks from other platforms, saying such posts could result in penalties like reduced distribution or removal of monetisation privileges.

READ ALSO:Meta Agrees To Pay Trump $25m To Settle Account Ban Lawsuit

As part of the latest update, Meta has introduced post-level insights on the Professional Dashboard, allowing creators to track the performance of individual posts. Creators can also check their Support Home screen to determine if their content or earnings face potential restrictions.

In a parallel move, Google’s YouTube has issued an update to its monetisation guidelines, announcing that content deemed mass-produced or excessively repetitive will no longer qualify for ad revenue.

The policy update initially caused confusion online, with some creators interpreting it as a clampdown on AI-generated content. However, YouTube later clarified that this is not the case.

“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetise,” YouTube said in a statement.

Both tech giants say these changes are designed to raise content standards and strengthen protections for creators in an increasingly competitive digital ecosystem.

Israel on Wednesday threatened to increase its attacks on Syria unless the government withdrew its forces from the country’s south, where there have been deadly clashes between Druze and Bedouin tribes.

Defence Minister Israel Katz called on Damascus to “leave the Druze in Sweida alone” after troops were sent to the region to quell the several days of unrest.

“As we have made clear and warned, Israel will not abandon the Druze in Syria and will enforce the demilitarisation policy we have decided on,” he said in a statement.

READ ALSO:

Syrian forces should withdraw, he added, and promised no let-up in Israeli military attacks until that happened, saying Israel would “raise the level of responses against the regime if the message is not understood”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in February that southern Syria must be completely demilitarised, warning that Israel would not accept the presence of Damascus’s Islamist-led government near its territory.

The head of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, on Wednesday called the situation “an existential battle for the Druze community”.

READ ALSO:UK ‘Was Informed Of US Strikes’ On Iran, Plans Evacuating Briton Out of Israel

Israel’s military announced on Tuesday that it had struck military vehicles belonging to government forces in the Sweida area of southern Syria following the clashes.

According to witnesses, Druze armed groups and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, government forces took part in fighting alongside the Bedouin agains

Three Kenyan soldiers were killed Tuesday and several injured when their vehicle was blown up by an improvised explosive device in eastern Lamu county near the border with Somalia, the army said Tuesday.

The soldiers were on patrol along the road between Kiunga and Sankuri when their vehicle struck the improvised explosive device (IED).

“Regrettably, three gallant soldiers succumbed to their injuries,” the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) said.

READ ALSO: Kenya Grants Visa-free Entry To all Africans, Excludes Two Countries

The statement said wounded personnel were evacuated to specialised military facilities, and were “responding well to treatment”, without providing more details. Local media reports said there were seven wounded.

The statement added that “multi-agency security teams” had launched investigations.

The area has been plagued by attacks by the Islamist Al-Shabaab group.

READ ALSO: Heavy Security As Kenya Braces For More Protests

In 2018 five soldiers were killed and six wounded in an attack later claimed by the group, which is based in regions of Somalia outside of government control.

The Al-Qaeda-linked organisation has previously claimed several attacks that have killed dozens of Kenyan policemen and soldiers.

The group has been fighting to overthrow the government in Mogadishu for over a decade, and a recent uptick of attacks in Somalia has fuelled concerns of a jihadist resurgence after the militants were forced back in recent years.

AFP