Violence festers on Facebook
Threatening rhetoric shut down by site — once it is alerted to it
Before Facebook shut down a rapidly growing “Stop the Steal” Facebook group on Thursday, the forum featured calls for members to ready their weapons should President Donald Trump lose his bid to remain in the White House.
In disabling the group after coverage by Reuters and other news organisations, Facebook cited the forum’s efforts to delegitimise the election process and “worrying calls for violence from some members”. Such rhetoric was not uncommon in the run-up to the election on Facebook, but it did not always get the same treatment.
A survey of US-based Facebook groups between September and October conducted by digital intelligence firm CounterAction found rhetoric with violent overtones in thousands of politically oriented public groups with millions of members.
Variations of 20 phrases that could be associated with calls for violence, such as “lock and load” and “we need a civil war”, appeared along with references to election outcomes in about 41,000 instances in USbased public Facebook groups over the twomonth period.
Other phrases, like “shoot them” and “kill them all”, were used within public groups at least 7,345 times and 1,415 times respectively, according to CounterAction. “Hang him” appeared 8,132 times. “Time to start shooting, folks”, read one comment.
Facebook said it was reviewing CounterAction’s findings, which Reuters shared with the company, and will take action to enforce policies “that reduce real-world harm and civil unrest, including in groups”, according to spokesperson Dani Lever.
The company declined to say whether examples shared by Reuters violated its rules or say where it draws the line in deciding whether a phrase “incites or facilitates serious violence”, which, according to its policies, is grounds for removal.
Prosecutors have linked several disrupted militia plots to Facebook groups this year, including a planned attack on Black Lives Matter protesters in Las Vegas and a scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
To address concerns, Facebook announced a flurry of policy changes aimed at curbing “militarised social movements”.
It says it has removed 14,200 groups on the basis of those changes since August.
As pressure on the company intensified ahead of the election, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will pause recommendations for political groups and new groups. That measure did not prevent the “Stop the Steal” group from swelling to more than 365,000 members in less than 24 hours.
Facebook has promoted groups aggressively since Zuckerberg made them a strate
gic priority in 2017, saying they would encourage more “meaningful connections”.
It stepped up groups promotion in news feeds and search engine results last month, even as civil rights organisations warned the product had become a breeding ground for extremism and misinformation.
The public groups can be seen, searched and joined by anyone on Facebook. Groups
offer private options that conceal posts — or the existence of the forum — even when it has hundreds of thousands of members.
Facebook has said it relies heavily on artificial intelligence to monitor the forums and flag posts that may incite violent actions to human content reviewers.