According to Reuters, Facebook (FB.O) is taking a more severe approach to shutting down coordinated groups of real-user accounts engaged in some damaging actions on its platform, employing the same tactics its security teams employ against campaigns involving fake accounts.
The new strategy, which is being disclosed for the first time here, employs measures similar to those used by Facebook’s security teams to shut down networks engaged in influence operations that use bogus identities to sway public opinion, such as Russian troll farms.
It could have enormous ramifications for how Facebook handles political and other coordinated actions that infringe its rules, at a time when the social media giant’s response to abuses on its platforms is being investigated by worldwide governments and civil society groups.
Facebook said it now plans to take the same network-level approach with groups of coordinated real accounts that break its rules systemically, such as through mass reporting, in which many users falsely report a target’s content or account in order to have it shut down, or brigading, a type of online harassment in which users coordinate to target an individual through mass posts or comments.
In a related development, Facebook stated on Thursday that it would take the same approach to real-user campaigns that create “organized social harm” on and off its platforms, as it took down the German anti-COVID restrictions Querdenken movement.
These expansions, according to a spokeswoman, allow Facebook’s security teams to identify core movements fueling such conduct and take more sweeping actions than the company might normally take, such as eliminating content or individual accounts.
Facebook had “little policy around organized authentic harm,” according to a leaked internal assessment regarding the company’s role in the Jan. 6 violence on the US Capitol and its difficulty in curbing the fast-growing “Stop the Steal” movement.
