"Hindsight Is 20/20": An Internal Report Shows How Facebook Failed To Prevent A "Stop The Steal"...

[Nevilledog]

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Craig Silverman
@CraigSilverman
Exclusive: An internal report reveals how Facebook failed to prevent the "Stop the Steal" movement from using the platform to "spread conspiracy, and help incite the Capitol insurrection.” This new evidence contradicts public statements from Zuck/Sandberg:

“Hindsight Is 20/20”: An Internal Report Shows How Facebook Failed To Prevent A “Stop The Steal”...
An internal task force found that Facebook failed to take appropriate action against the Stop the Steal movement ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, and hoped the company could “do better next...
buzzfeednews.com
7:39 AM · Apr 22, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-failed-stop-the-steal-insurrection

Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of a House of Representatives committee that his company had done its part “to secure the integrity of the election.” While the social network did not catch everything, the billionaire chief executive said, Facebook had “made our services inhospitable to those who might do harm” in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Less than a week after his appearance, however, an internal company report reached a far different conclusion: Facebook failed to stop a highly influential movement from using its platform to delegitimize the election, encourage violence, and help incite the Capitol riot.

Shared on Facebook’s employee communication platform last month, the report is a blunt assessment of how people connected to “Stop the Steal,” a far-right movement based on the conspiracy theory that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election, used the social network to foment an attempted coup. The document explicitly states that Facebook activity from people connected to Stop the Steal and other Trump loyalist groups including the Patriot Party played a role in the events of Jan. 6, and that the company’s emphasis on rooting out fake accounts and “inauthentic behavior” held it back from taking preemptive action when real people were involved.

“Hindsight is 20/20, at the time, it was very difficult to know whether what we were seeing was a coordinated effort to delegitimize the election, or whether it was free expression by users who were afraid and confused and deserved our empathy,” reads the report, which was put together by an internal task force studying harmful networks and obtained by BuzzFeed News. “But hindsight being 20/20 makes it all the more important to look back to learn what we can about the growth of the election delegitimizing movements that grew, spread conspiracy, and helped incite the Capitol insurrection.”

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[Scrivener7]

1. Can't be. People on DU are always telling me that Facebook is totally benign.