Facebook Cracks Down On Thousands Of Politically-Charged Conspiracy Accounts

Last week, Facebook announced that it would begin cracking down on thousands of Facebook and Instagram accounts affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, militia and anarchist groups, and other politically-charged accounts promoting violence.

In addition, while the social media giant said it will allow users to continue posting content that supports these groups, the company will “restrict their ability” to organize on the platform. All of this is an effort by the company to sharpen its focus on what kind of content, exactly, it considers to go too far.

“We have seen growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior,” Facebook wrote in a blog post announcing the takedowns. “So today we are expanding our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to address organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform.”

Of course, when Facebook changes its rules like this, the company inadvertently shoots down its own excuse that it’s “too big” to be responsible for content moderation. Here’s hoping it strengthens its guidelines for other sorts of offensive content, too.




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