This week, Facebook got some (rare) good press by (finally!) doing something about the Q-Anon groups flourishing on its platform, banning groups and removing pages that pushed the baseless conspiracy theory. The glow didn’t last long though, as Thursday brought a double-whammy of bad news. Yesterday afternoon, Politico’s afternoon newsletter’s subject line appeared in our inbox like this: “Playbook PM: The plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer- Presented by Facebook: POLITICO’s m…”
Facebook’s sponsorship of the newsletter only made it slightly, somewhat comically appear as though the plan to kidnap the Governor of Michigan was presented by the social media company. In reality, however, Facebook does appear to be where the anti-COVID-19-gym-closings domestic terrorism group organized. After doing firearms training and a failed explosives attempt, members “shared photos and video recordings of the exercise in Facebook discussions…”, according to the arrest affidavit. When the plan to attack Governor Whitmer’s vacation home were solidified, one of the would-be-assailants posted to a private Facebook page about how they’re “about to be busy” and “it starts now,” as George Washington University fellow on Extremism JJ MacNab pointed out on twitter, while also noting that one of the defendants is still active on Facebook.
So no, obviously the plot to kidnap the Governor was not literally “Presented by Facebook” in the same way the email was, but at the same time, it was literally what facilitated the organizing, training, and recruitment of the domestic terrorist cell.
And of course, they’re hardly the only group using Facebook for nefarious means.
Climate denial networks have long exploited the platform, and a recent report from Influence Map found at least 51 climate denial ads from groups in DeSmog’s database of deniers were served up to at least 8 million Facebook users. All for a relatively paltry sum of $42,000.
So now we know just how dedicated Facebook is to dealing with climate disinformation: not at all. The multi-billion-dollar company will happily take fossil fuel funded groups’ money to spread messages of denial and deceit using the platform’s fine-tuned microtargeting services.
As their better-late-than-never purge of Q-Anon shows, Facebook is perfectly capable of removing conspiratorial content, and everyone agrees they’re justified in doing so when the content presents a risk to public health.
With wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and everything else climate change is doing to prove that it’s a threat to public health, let’s hope Facebook figures out how to handle climate conspiracies in the same way it’s handled the Q-Anon threat to public health.
The social media website created to rank the hotness of Mark Zuckerburg’s college classmates has proven that it can be a place to build communities, but it needs to prevent itself from being used by those who are out to destroy them. It’s great that it’s grown to offer so many services, but at the same time it should figure out how to make sure that it isn’t a cheap advertising, recruiting and organizing tool for professional propagandists, amateur conspiracy theorists, and would-be domestic terrorists.
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