'Stop the Steal' Spread On Facebook Enabled Jan. 6 Insurrection, Internal Report Finds

[appalachiablue]

- Cardboard caricature of Zuckerberg outside the U.S. Capitol during his March 24 testimony before Congress about the platform's role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Facebook executives have been dismissive from the start about attempts to hold them accountable for their social media platform’s role in inciting and organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol—including CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress last month in which he evaded questions about his company’s culpability, saying: “I think that the responsibility here lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection.”

But an internal Facebook report uncovered by BuzzFeed shows that the company failed to take action against “Stop the Steal” and other accounts where false information about the election was widely propagated in an attempt to delegitimize the 2020 election, violence was encouraged, and where much of the insurrection was organized. Though the report was completed shortly after Zuckerberg’s testimony, it essentially corroborated a report by the nonprofit advocacy group Avaaz days before he testified that found Facebook’s culpability in the Capitol siege extended to well over a year before the event.

BuzzFeed reports that the internal document, assembled by an internal task force studying harmful networks, acknowledges the role of Facebook activity by “Stop the Steal” activists, as well as pro-Trump groups associated with the brief attempt to organize a “Patriot Party” split from the GOP, in the violent events of Jan. 6. It also observes that insisting on an “inauthentic behavior” standard—rather than one based on the spread of misinformation and violent speech—hindered its attempts to take the appropriate preemptive steps.

“Hindsight is 20/20, at the time, it was very difficult to know whether what we were seeing was a coordinated effort to delegitimize the election, or whether it was free expression by users who were afraid and confused and deserved our empathy,” reads the report. “But hindsight being 20/20 makes it all the more important to look back to learn what we can about the growth of the election delegitimizing movements that grew, spread conspiracy, and helped incite the Capitol Insurrection."...

More, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/24/2027167/-Facebook-internal-report-fesses-up-to-failures-leading-up-to-Jan-6-insurrection-at-Capitol
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- Facebook Knows It Was Used To Help Incite The Jan. 6 Insurrection, BuzzFeed,
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-failed-stop-the-steal-insurrection

Joan Donovan, research director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, said the Stop the Steal movement began long before Election Day, and Facebook’s failure to prepare shows it’s unable to protect democracy. “For me, at the end of the day, it comes down to: Do you care? Do you care enough about democracy? Do you care enough about the fate of the nation to ensure that your product is not used to coordinate and overthrow the government?” she said. “There is something about the way Facebook organizes groups that leads to massive public events. And when they’re organized on the basis of misinformation, hate, incitement, and harassment, we get very violent outcomes.”

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Perhaps FB and others that allowed this sort of unchecked hate speech to continue unabated...

should be sued massively by those who were negatively impacted by the 1/6/21 events (those who died (the families of), and those negatively impacted).

Also, djt should be sued to an inch (as well as all of his cronies too, such as Stone, etc.) who were in the area too as these events unfolded. They were involved in some manner. Otherwise, why were they there in D.C.?

[appalachiablue]

2. How FB cannot be sued is troubling

since it's clear enabling. The others are also responsible but will likely weasel out of prosecution, maybe not. This can't continue..

If a radical leftist group was involved instead it would be a different matter we know.