The New York Times is reporting that Facebook shut down a number of American-run pages today, including “Right Wing News” which has over 3 million subscribers:
Big story by @sheeraf: Facebook is taking down hundreds of American-run accounts, including Right Wing News (3.1 million followers) and Reverb Press (816,000 followers), as part of a crackdown on domestic disinformation ahead of the midterms. https://t.co/jaN0L5BrBT
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) October 11, 2018
From the NYT:
After Dr. Blasey testified, Right Wing News posted several false stories about her — including the suggestion that her lawyers were being bribed by Democrats — and then used the network of Facebook pages and accounts to share the pieces so that they proliferated online quickly, social media researchers said.
The result was a real-time spreading of disinformation started by Americans, for Americans.
What Right Wing News did was part of a shift in the flow of online disinformation, falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame. In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter to sway voters in the United States with divisive messages. Now, weeks before the midterm elections on Nov. 6, such influence campaigns are increasingly a domestic phenomenon fomented by Americans on the left and the right.
A total of 559 pages and 221 accounts were affected:
Facebook has removed "559 Pages and 251 accounts" in the US "that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior." They include:
-Nation in Distress
-Reasonable People Unite
-The Resistance
-Reverb Press
-Right Wing News
-Snowflakes— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) October 11, 2018
Facebook allegedly removed the accounts for using “‘inauthentic’ accounts as admins”:
These are hyperpartisan pages that at times spread false or misleading info. Just recently Right Wing News reupped an utterly baseless claim from last month about Hillary Clinton. But a key issue according to FB seems to be the pages using "inauthentic" accounts as admins. pic.twitter.com/M1N3GLgpVo
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) October 11, 2018
And “because they’ve ‘consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.'”
These pages did at times publish false or misleading information, but it's technically not accurate to say Facebook removed them because of that. FB says it removed them because they've "consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior." However…
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) October 11, 2018
But it sure does look like a cute way to censor what they don’t like:
The removals are part of the company's stepped-up efforts ahead of the midterms and its work to combat misinformation overall. But Facebook will always cite spam or account violations as opposed to content issues whenever possible. And apparently these pages gave it reason to…
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) October 11, 2018
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Related:
Still BUTTHURT! ThinkProgress' Judd Legum has 'inside story' on how Weekly Standard became Facebook fact-checker (lol!) https://t.co/2Oeb9mCFut
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 13, 2018
ThinkProgress founder throws a MAJOR SNIT FIT after Facebook selects The Weekly Standard to fact check a Kavanaugh article https://t.co/ujkPFSJGO2
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 11, 2018
Alex Jones not allowed into today's Senate hearing for Facebook and Twitter https://t.co/nGIcVZUkLg
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 5, 2018
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