Facebook groups pivot to attacks on Black Lives Matter

A loose network of Facebook groups that took root across country in April to organize protests over coronavirus stay-at-home orders has become a hub of misinformation and conspiracies ories that have pivoted to a variety of new targets. ir latest: Black Lives Matter and nationwide protests of racial injustice.

se groups, which w boast a collective audience of more than 1 million members, are still thriving after most states started lifting virus restrictions.

And many have expanded ir focus.

One group transformed itself last month from “Reopen California” to “California Patriots Pro Law & Order,” with recent posts mocking Black Lives Matter or changing slogan to “White Lives Matter.” Members have used profane slurs to refer to Black people and protesters, calling m “animals,” “racist” and “thugs”— a direct violation of Facebook’s hate speech standards.

Ors have become garing grounds for promoting conspiracy ories about protests, suggesting protesters were paid to go to demonstrations and that even death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in custody of Minneapolis police, was std.

An Associated Press review of most recent posts in 40 of se Facebook groups — most of which were launched by conservative groups or pro-gun activists — found conversations largely shifted last month to attacking nationwide protests over killing of Black men and women after Floyd’s death.

Facebook users in some of se groups post hundreds of times a day in threads often seen by members only and shielded from public view.

“Unless Facebook is actively looking for disinformation in those s, y will go unticed for a long time and y will grow,” said Joan Dovan, research director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. “Over time, people will drag or people into m and y will continue to organize.”

Facebook said it is aware of collection of reopen groups, and is using techlogy as well as relying on users to identify problematic posts. company has vowed in past to look for material that violates its rules in private groups as well as in public places on its site. But platform has t always been able to deliver on that promise.

Shortly after groups were formed, y were rife with coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy ories, including assertions that masks are “useless,” U.S. government intends to forcibly vaccinate people and that COVID-19 is a hoax intended to hurt President Donald Trump’s re-election chances this fall.

Posts in se private groups are less likely to be scrutinized by Facebook or its independent fact-checkers, said Dovan. Facebook enlists media outlets around world, including Associated Press, to fact check claims on its site. Members in se private groups have created an echo chamber and tend to agree with posts, so are refore less likely to flag m for Facebook or fact-checkers to review, Dovan added.

At least one Facebook group, ReOpen PA, asked its 105,000 members to keep conversation focused on reopening businesses and schools in Pennsylvania, and implemented rules to forbid posts about racial justice protests as well as conspiracy ories about efficacy of masks. But most ors have t moderated ir ps as closely.

For example, some groups in New Jersey, Texas and Ohio have labeled systemic racism a hoax. A member of California Facebook group posted a widely debunked flyer that says “White men, women and children, you are enemy,” which was falsely attributed to Black Lives Matter. Ar falsely claimed that a Black man was brandishing a gun outside St. Louis mansion where a white couple confronted protesters with firearms. Dozens of users in several of groups have pushed an unsubstantiated ory that liberal billionaire George Soros is paying crowds to attend racial justice protests.

Facebook members in two groups — Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine and Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine — also regularly refer to protesters as “animals,” “thugs,” or “paid” looters.

In Ohio group, one user wrote on May 31: “ focus is shifted from voice of free people rising up against tyranny ... to lawless thugs from a well kwn racist group causing violence and upheaval of lives.”

Those two ps are part of a network of groups in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania created by conservative activist Ben Dorr, who has for years raised money to lobby on hot-button conservative issues like abortion or gun rights. ir latest cause — pushing for goverrs to reopen ir states — has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers in private Facebook groups y launched.

Private groups that balloon to that size, with little oversight, are like “creepy basements” where extremist views and misinformation can lurk, said disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at npartisan Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “It’s sort of a way that platforms are enabling some of worst actors to stay on it,” said Jankowicz. “Rar than being de-platformed — y can organize.”