CHICAGO (AP) – A flexible network of Facebook teams that took root nationally in April to organize protests that opposed home maintenance orders for coronaviruses has an incorrect information medium and conspiracy theories that have turned toward a variety of new targets. His last: Black Lives Matter and national protests opposed to racial injustice.
These groups, which now have a collective audience of more than a million members, continue to thrive after peak states began to remove restrictions on viruses.
And many have expanded their field of action.
Last month a band from “Reopen California” to “California Patriots Pro Law – Order” appeared, with articles mocking Black Lives Matter or converting the slogan into “White Lives Matter.” Members used profane insults to refer to blacks and protesters as “animals,” “racists,” and “thugs,” a direct violation of Facebook’s hate speech standards.
Others have become gathering grounds for promoting conspiracy theories about the protests, suggesting protesters were paid to go to demonstrations and that even the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in the custody of Minneapolis police, was staged.
An Associated Press review of the maximum number of recent posts on 40 of those Facebook teams, most of which were introduced through conservative teams or pro-gun activists, revealed that the talks changed widely last month to attack national protests opposed to the murder of black men and women. after Floyd’s death.
Facebook users on some of those teams post a lot of times a day on threads viewed only by members and protected from public view.
“Unless Facebook actively searches for incorrect information in those spaces, they will go unnoticed for a long time and grow,” said Joan Donovan, director of studies at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Policy and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. “Over time, others will attract others and continue to organize.”
Facebook said it was aware of the collection of reopened computers and was employing the generation while relying on users to identify problematic posts. The company has committed itself in the afterlife to look for curtains that violate its regulations in personal equipment as well as in public places in its place. But the platform has been unable to deliver on that promise.
Shortly after the teams were formed, they were affected by incorrect information about coronavirus and conspiracy theories, and added claims that the mask is “unnecessary,” the U.S. government. He intends to forcibly vaccinate others and that COVID-19 is a hoax intended to harm President Donald Trump. Back. elections this fall.
Posts through those personal teams are less likely to be reviewed through Facebook or their independent data verifiers, Donovan said. Facebook uses media from around the world, adding The Associated Press, to determine claims on its website. Members of those personal teams have created a resonance chamber and tend to agree with the messages. As a result, they are less likely to be reported to Facebook or fact checkers for review, Donovan said.
At least one Facebook group, ReOpen PA, asked its 105,000 members to suspend the verbal exchange aimed at reopening businesses and schools in Pennsylvania, and implemented regulations to ban publications on racial justice protests as well as conspiracy theories about the effectiveness of masks.
But most others have not moderated their pages as closely.
For example, some teams in New Jersey, Texas and Ohio have described systemic racism as deceptive. A member of the California Facebook organization posted a widely denied flyer that read, “Men, women and white children, you are the enemy,” which he falsely attributed to Black Lives Matter. Another falsely claimed that a black man brandished an open-air weapon at St. Louis Mansion, where a white couple was facing protesters with guns. Dozens of multi-team users have put forward an unfounded theory that liberal billionaire George Soros will pay crowds to attend protests over racial justice.
Facebook members of two teams – Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine and Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine – also refer to protesters as “animals,” “thugs” or “paid” looters.
In the Ohio organization, one user wrote May 31: “The accomplice has gone from the voice of other loose people who oppose tyrannyArray … anarchic thugs from a known racist organization that is causing violence and changing lives.”
Both pages are part of a network of teams in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania created through conservative activist Ben Dorr, who for years raised the budget to advance hot conservative issues such as abortion or gun rights. His most recent cause, encouraging governors to reopen their states, has attracted thousands of fans on the personal Facebook teams they have released.
Private teams that reach this size, with little oversight, are like “terrifying basements” where extremist perspectives and misinformation can hide, said Nina Jankowicz, disinformation researcher and member of the Wilson Center, a tank based in Washington, DC.
“It’s kind of like platforms allow some of the worst players to stay,” Jankowicz said. “Instead of being dismantled, they can be organized.”
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The associated press generation Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed.