Facebook groups topped 10,000 daily attacks on election before Jan. 6, analysis shows

[Zorro]

Review of millions of posts show Facebook played a critical role in spreading false narratives that fomented violence that day

Facebook groups swelled with at least 650,000 posts attacking the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory between Election Day and the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, with many calling for executions or other political violence, an investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post has found.

The barrage — averaging at least 10,000 posts a day, a scale not reported previously — turned the groups into incubators for the baseless claims supporters of President Donald Trump voiced as they stormed the Capitol, demanding he get a second term. Many posts portrayed Biden’s election as the result of widespread fraud that required extraordinary action — including the use of force — to prevent the nation from falling into the hands of traitors.

“LOOKS LIKE CIVIL WAR is BECOMING INEVITABLE !!!” read a post a month before the Capitol assault. “WE CANNOT ALLOW FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS TO STAND ! SILENT NO MORE MAJORITY MUST RISE UP NOW AND DEMAND BATTLEGROUND STATES NOT TO CERTIFY FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS NOW !”

Another post, made 10 days after the 2020 election, bore an avatar of a smiling woman with her arms raised in apparent triumph and read, “WE ARE AMERICANS!!! WE FOUGHT AND DIED TO START OUR COUNTRY! WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT... FIGHT LIKE HELL. WE WILL SAVE HER❤ THEN WERE GOING TO SHOOT THE TRAITORS!!!!!!!!!!!”

One post showed a Civil War-era picture of a gallows with more than two dozen nooses and hooded figures waiting to be hanged. Other posts called for arrests and executions of specific public figures — both Democrats and Republicans — depicted as betraying the nation by denying Trump a second term.

https://wapo.st/3qKD22d

[Wicked Blue]

1. Boris and his comrades were very very busy nt

[Pinback]

2. How ProPublica and The Post researched posts of Facebook groups

- Washington Post, 1/4/2022

Data analyzed for the ProPublica-Washington Post examination of Facebook posts was collected from over 100,000 public Facebook groups tracked between January 2020 and June 2021 by CounterAction, a firm that studies online disinformation.

CounterAction marked Facebook groups for tracking if group members had posted links to U.S. political websites. Additional Facebook groups were then marked for monitoring if they had any members in common with groups already under observation. This process was repeated over the tracking period to identify newly created groups and add them to the data set.

- More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/04/facebook-propublica-post-jan6-methodology/

From the Pro Publica story, co-posted with WaPo:
Facebook Hosted Surge of Misinformation and Threats Leading Up to Jan. 6 Attack
- https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hosted-surge-of-misinformation-and-insurrection-threats-in-months-leading-up-to-jan-6-attack-records-show
A ProPublica/Washington Post analysis provides the clearest evidence yet that the social media giant played a critical role in spreading lies that fomented the violence.

Facebook executives have downplayed the company’s role in the Jan. 6 attack and have resisted calls, including from its own Oversight Board, for a comprehensive internal investigation. The company also has yet to turn over all the information requested by the congressional committee studying the Jan. 6 attack. Facebook said it is continuing to negotiate with the committee.

The ProPublica/Post investigation, which analyzed millions of posts between Election Day and Jan. 6 and drew on internal company documents and interviews with former employees, provides the clearest evidence yet that Facebook played a critical role in the spread of false narratives that fomented the violence of Jan. 6.

Its efforts to police such content, the investigation also found, were ineffective and started too late to quell the surge of angry, hateful misinformation coursing through Facebook groups — some of it explicitly calling for violent confrontation with government officials, a theme that foreshadowed the storming of the Capitol that day amid clashes that left five people dead.

We also know, from Frances Haugen's revelations (CNN link), that after the November 2020 election, Facebook had dismantled its civic integrity team.

Clearly, as a private company, has the right to terminate accounts of users it deems post content that is harmful to the public interest (and has even done so in some celebrated cases). It's also clear that the company has prioritized page clicks over civic responsibility.