On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear before two Congressional committees to testify about social media’s role in promoting extremism and misinformation.
A new report indicates that he has a lot of explaining to do. Indeed, it offers proof that Facebook not only fails to curb dangerous content on its site, it actually generates and amplifies it.
In advance of Zuckerberg’s testimony, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) published new research showing “that Facebook is not only continuing to host potentially dangerous militia groups, but in some cases actually creating militia content and pushing it to users through its recommendation algorithm.”
The report explains, “Facebook is auto-generating pages for some militia organizations, effectively expanding the reach of the movement.” It continues:
Auto-generated pages are not managed by an administrator, but they can still play a role in amplifying extremist views. For example, if a Facebook user “likes” one of these pages, the page gets added to the “about” section of the user’s profile, giving it more visibility. This can also serve as a signal to potential recruiters about pro-militia sympathies.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s recommendation algorithm is pushing users who “like” militia pages toward other militia content.
This revelation flies in the face of Facebook’s August 2020 assertion that they “remain vigilant in enforcing our expanded Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy against militarized social movements and violence-inducing conspiracy networks, such as QAnon.” In fact, TTP found that six militia groups created Facebook pages after this announcement, including “Texas Militia,” which launched during the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The TTP report also points out that roughly 70% of the 201 militia pages they discovered on Facebook have “militia” in the title. That makes Facebook’s inability to stop them particularly baffling. As TTP asserts, those names reveal a “hard-to-miss affiliation, especially for a company that says its artificial intelligence systems are successfully detecting and removing policy violations like hate speech and terrorist content.”
In addition, TTP found that Facebook is still allowing some militias to use its event page – a feature that allegedly encouraged 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse to travel to Kenosha, Wisconsin to “police” a Black Lives Matter protest. Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed a man.
TTP also discovered that many militia groups are still promoting the far-right Proud Boys, an organization that has been banned from Facebook and played a prominent role in the deadly January 6th attack.
In response to the report, Facebook told Buzzfeed News:
“We’ll review the accuracy of the claims and the content referenced as soon as we have access to this report. We have banned over 890 militarized social movements and removed more than 3,400 Pages, 19,500 groups, 120 events, 25,300 Facebook profiles and 7500 Instagram accounts representing them; but simply using the word ‘militia’ does not violate our policies.”
