1/ Today, we shared an enforcement under a new protocol designed to extend our network disruptions to new types of adversarial groups. We still have a lot of work to do, but this is a first step into a new space about.fb.com/news/2021/09/r… 🧵
2/ We built our disruptions strategy on the idea that enforcement against tightly coordinated, highly adversarial groups could be more effective if we worked to identify and disrupt the network’s entire presence on our platform. A type of digital deterrence, if you will.
3/ We’ve used this strategy against 150+ CIB networks since 2017, and against sophisticated cyber-espionage actors. And it’s had results: we see some of these networks move off Facebook for less aggressive havens and their ops have less success on FB. about.fb.com/news/2021/05/i…
4/ When our security team set out to develop approaches to this threat space, we knew there were no single solutions here to address all potential adversarial problems. And of course, network disruptions are not a panacea, but they can be effective against the worst of the worst
5/ Over the past several months, we’ve been working with our colleagues across Facebook to expand our network disruption efforts to address threats that come from groups of primarily authentic accounts coordinating on our platform to cause serious harm.
6/ @eculliford has great reporting on this work against challenges like mass reporting and brigading earlier: reuters.com/technology/exc…
6.5/ Today’s enforcement is under our new Coordinate Social Harm protocol.
7/ These challenges are complex & we need to be careful and deliberate when tackling coordinated efforts by authentic users to distinguish between people who organically come together to organize for social change and the types of adversarial networks that can cause social harm
8/ That means we we’re tightly constraining our enforcement to the worst of the worst behavior to avoid over-enforcing by removing people who don’t meet the pillars of this protocol: adversarial coordination, systemic policy violations, and severe social harm.
9/ Coordinated Social Harm typically involves networks of primarily authentic users who organize to systematically violate our policies to cause harm on or off our platform. This isn’t just about individual posting the same content about issues they passionately believe in.
10/ This is meant to complement our existing content policies, which already remove violating content and accounts, including for incitement to violence, bullying and harassment, or harmful health misinformation.
11/ However, coming at this from a threat disruption and security perspective, in some cases these content violations are perpetrated by a tightly organized group, working together to amplify their members’ harmful behavior and repeatedly violate our content policies.
12/ That means that the potential for harm caused by the totality of the network's activity far exceeds the impact of each individual post or account.
13/ To address these organized efforts more effectively, CSH enforcement protocol enables us to take action against the core network engaged in this behavior.
14/ Today’s enforcement was against a network that systemically engaged in violations of our hate speech, incitement to violence, and harmful health misinfo policies, and was associated with the Querdenken movement in Germany.
15/ This Querdenken-linked activity appeared to run across multiple internet services and the broader internet and typically portrayed violence as the way to overturn the pandemic-related government measures limiting personal freedoms.
16/ From public reporting, this group engaged in physical violence against journalists, police, and medical staff in Germany. On our platform, the network repeatedly violated our policies against harmful health misinfo, incitement of violence, bullying, harassment, & hate speech
17/ See our post for more information: about.fb.com/news/2021/09/r…
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