Facebook Can't Seem To Do Anything About 'Stop the Steal' Groups

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE: On Thursday night, Facebook announced it had activated "break glass" measures to try to quell the spread of disinformation, which has been supercharged by the lies being spread by President Donald Trump and his allies. The unprecedented move may have been triggered by Facebook's decision hours earlier to shut down a viral group called "Stop the Steal" that had racked up 360,000 in the space of 24 hours. The group was spreading disinformation, advocating for gun violence, and organizing real-world protests. But the impact of Facebook's moves has been negligible. A VICE News investigation, using the Facebook-owned analytics tool CrowdTangle, found at least three active groups on Facebook using variations of the Stop the Steal name, all of which have tens of thousands of followers and all of which are sharing the same disinformation as the original group. The biggest group identified is called "StoptheSteal" which has almost 70,000 members. The next biggest is called "Stop the Steal 2.0" with 40,000 followers. Finally, a group with an identical name -- "Stop the Steal" -- has 25,800 members. By allowing the original group to grow so quickly, and to such a scale before removing it, Facebook could have inadvertently made the situation even worse, Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News. "The challenge in managing copycat groups is that there is additional potential for voter fraud disinformation and threats of violence among communities who may be motivated for further action given the removal of the original group, particularly around possible mobilization at election centers." "We are continuing to review additional content and activity and will take action accordingly," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told VICE News.

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