Facebook to verify identities of popular pages

Facebook will verify the identity of people running popular pages, as part of its continued efforts to stem fake news and propaganda, reports BBC. 

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said all “large” pages would be audited - any which did not clear the process would be prevented from posting. 

The move is designed to prevent users who run pages using fake accounts from hiding their true identity. 

Mr Zuckerberg said he backed proposed political ads regulation.

It would require technology companies to collect more data on the source of those advertisements.

"Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform," he wrote. 

"And that's why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

Also announced on Friday, Facebook will add more transparency over the funding of "issue-based" political ads.

"These steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system," Mr Zuckerberg said.

"But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads."