1/ Apropos 60 Minutes interview with Facebook whistleblower, there are two thing I want to share. media matters did a much research leading up to and around FB role in attack. But two big one jumps out…
2/ Days before Jan 6 w/in far right FB groups we track (many closed ones), we started seeing a sudden shift. People urging others to bring guns to the rally.
mediamatters.org/facebook/users…
mediamatters.org/facebook/users…
3/ This was notable for a couple reasons. For starters, atypical. Usually people remind others *not* to bring guns because of DC gun laws. Second, it seemed…almost calculated, coordinated or organized.
FB was advised. But nothing. No additional investigation or follow through.
FB was advised. But nothing. No additional investigation or follow through.
4/The second thing was how Facebook helped build the infrastructure that spread disinfo, extremism and the core of the stop steal organizing.
5/ Between the spring and September 2020, QAnon groups/pages growth rates were about 24%. For comparison, right-leaning pages had about 2% growth rate, news pages about a 1% and left pages about 0.7%.
6/ The overwhelming bulk of the metastization of the QAnon networks on FB were the result of Facebook's recommendation engine. It was in overdriving helping connect all these individuals. This QAnon infrastructure was massive, eclipsed basically anything else.
7/ FB was forced to eliminate much of Q pages/groups in October. But the damage was done. Much of the disinfo had already fully spread and much of the infrastructure just adapted, camoflaged or was used to help pump up other things.
8/ So to sum up, the two big things that we saw were: FB knowingly and actively helped organize and build extremist networks, and then allowed those same extremists to operationalize violence to be carried out off platform.
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