Facebook claims it is among the most productive in the industry at controlling harmful content on the site. That would possibly be true, but new revelations in Facebook documents leaked through whistleblower Frances Haugen call into question the company’s commitment to cracking down on hate groups. , conspiracy theories and other misdeeds that he knows are embedded in his platforms.
And even when Facebook is aware of the problem, it doesn’t take the mandatory measures.
The Daily Dot found that a QAnon conspiracy theorist that Facebook itself used as a wonderful example of some of the most harmful people on the platform can be discovered on Instagram. There, he brags about his countless prohibitions and calls the FDA a Cabal made our decision to identify communism. He is also co-owner of a “health” company that still has a Facebook account.
Internal Facebook Papers documents call him a QAnon super anchor, the best example of how other people became radicalized on their platform. He and an organization he led were banned last November. The documents imply that the individual also used Instagram. there.
Although the document is written, there is enough data to definitively identify that the company is aware that the person is interested in the company’s Facebook page and to strongly signify that they are aware of their Instagram account (The Daily Dot does identify the person, corporate or pages. )
The paper highlighting this individual’s activities, “Harmful Conspiracy Theories: Definitions, Characteristics, People,” demonstrates the time and effort Facebook has put into reading and how conspiracy theories have spread through its platform and the extent of its wisdom over other people. who spread them.
The paper highlights the many negative effects on behavior, fitness, and protection of conspiracy theory beliefs. It claims that such theories cause “paranoia/distress,” “legitimize violence,” and lead to “riskier legal and fitness behaviors. “he notes that the theories circulating on its platform “damage the reputation of the Facebook brand. “
The article cites various conspiracies, such as QAnon and chemtrails, and their possible misdeeds. Facebook implies that QAnon is the worst of them. On its own, it is said to have the potential to cause “violence [and] damage to relationships. “
He goes on to point out that conspiracy theories overlap with violent or hateful teams and come with “apocalyptic calls to action. “The general sum of Facebook’s research on conspiracy theories in general and QAnon in particular is that either they are dangerous, they divide and will be temporarily extended on their platform if nothing is done.
In this article, Facebook has established 4 subcategories of conspiracy theorists: producer, recruiter, network engineer, and researcher, defining those archetypes, and considers manufacturers to be the most dangerous.
According to Facebook, a manufacturer will be a “super presenter” of destructive conspiracy theories, creating and spreading piles of posts containing incorrect information each month on multiple Facebook surfaces (Messenger, groups, Instagram, news and comments) to “spread their ideology. and become leaders and/or crusaders of your group.
“The main [community operations] come with spam, hate, [dangerous organizations and individuals],” Facebook writes. Producers “are constantly looking for more avenues of influence,” he adds. He says they would possibly be motivated by ideology, faith or money.
He also provided an example of a genuine account explained as a manufacturer to show how problematic it is to have on the platform. This is the individual the Daily Dot discovered Facebook’s products nearly a year after it was banned.
The document provides a “user adventure [map]” of the producer’s account. He says he created an account in 2006. From that point on, he shared “benign generic posts” about life and politics. That’s what he said. Three years later, in 2009, he introduced a wellness business and in 2012, he began spreading conspiracy theories in articles about his business and his lifetime salary.
In January 2020, this absolutely QAnon individual, according to Facebook. In a facebook live at the beginning of the pandemic, he discussed a wide variety of QAnon theories and slogans, according to the company. In June, he introduced a Facebook organization that spread QAnon’s theories. Within a month, it had only about 9,000 members.
QAnon is the conspiracy theory that former President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a clique of pedophiles within the national elite.
During the widespread purge of QAnon accounts, Facebook banned them and the newspaper says it had grown to 40,000 subscribers.
The article then provides a detailed biographical history of the individual, as well as hypotheses about his motivations, frustrations, and signs that he is a producer. This additional segment indicates that the user has an “active GI” about which he has also shared destructive conspiracy. theories.
Facebook notes that the user purchased many classified ads and included screenshots of several examples of its classified classified ads for various fitness supplements. A search for calld products led the Daily Dot to several websites, all run by the same user. includes your call and surcall. His call led to a podcast, a business website, his Facebook page, and his private Instagram account. During a live stream of his podcast on Friday, he speculated that the Queen of England was dead, and in all likelihood a humanoid reptile.
“In fact, I can completely settle for the queen’s departure because I feel a disdain for the lizard,” he said.
Each of the sites and pages includes photographs and videos of the same person, who is also indexed as one of the company’s managers in public documents and as one of the homeowners on its website.
The non-public Facebook page and the QAnon organization it featured appear to have been deleted. The company’s Facebook page, introduced about ten years ago, remains active. One reviewer promoted the same thing about the product, an antiparasitic supplement, which Facebook included in its research of grower activity.
Although Facebook’s own document acknowledges that this person has an Instagram account in which percentage content of what he did in the banned group, at the time of writing, his Instagram page remains active (it is not clear if he had a sub-account that he could have had). On Instagram, in recent years, he has almost exclusively posted conspiracy theories, falsely claiming that vaccines cause COVID-19 and that Trump won the 2020 election.
No one has argued that Facebook or any other social media platform faces a simple task to remove conspiracy theories like QAnon, but many can now see that Facebook’s public positions don’t correlate with its behind-the-scenes action.
This account is about Frances Haugen’s disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which were also delivered to Congress in redacted form through her legal team. The redacted versions won in Congress were received through a consortium of news agencies, adding the Daily Dot, the York Times, Politico, the Atlantic, Wired, The Verge, CNN, Gizmodo and dozens of other media outlets.