Source: SOPA Images / Getty
Finding Black Trump supporters not named Diamond and Silk is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, so it should be hard to believe that there was actually Facebook groups full of them.
Facebook removed numerous Facebook groups that social network says were a part of a troll farm that were pretending to be African Americans supporting the occupant in the White House, Donald Trump, as well as QAnon supporters. The company said the groups were in violation of its policies against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
In the report, Facebook revealed that it removed 35 Facebook accounts, three pages, and 88 Instagram accounts for “violating our policy against foreign interference, which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign entity.” The suspicious activity by the pro-Trump movement which originated in Romania. The fugazi pages on Facebook had 1,600 followers, while the Instagram account had 7,200 people following it, and both used ridiculous hashtags like “BlackPeopleVoteForTrump.”
Per Facebook’s report:
“The people behind this network used fake accounts — some of which had already been detected and disabled by our automated systems — to pose as Americans, amplify and comment on their own content, and manage Pages including some posing as President Trump fan Pages. This network posted about US domestic news and events, including the upcoming November election, the Trump campaign, and support for the campaign by African Americans, conservative ideology, Christian beliefs, and Qanon. They also frequently reposted stories by American conservative news networks and the Trump campaign.”
Accounts that push conspiracy theories also got wiped from the platform as well. According to the report, Facebook removed several hundred accounts that were all connected to the conservative media organization Epoch Media Group.
The accounts were deleted for sharing conspiracy theories related to COVID-19. 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups, and 31 Instagram accounts, which equaled to a combined 2 million followers were deleted.
Facebook’s report states the accounts were associated with TruthMedia, a platform that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has banned from its platform. This latest news follows Facebook taking down a video of Trump falsely claiming that children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus.
Looks like Mark Zuckerberg has some sort of a spine after saying he wouldn’t check Trump for sharing misleading information stating his company didn’t want to be the “arbiter of truth.”
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Photo: SOPA Images / Getty
