Facebook denied it, but the court documents show: The angry mob incited itself more on Facebook than on other networks.
The storming of the Capitol in Washington on January 6th to prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden as the new US President is currently being examined in court. It turns out that Facebook played a larger role as a platform for organizing the storm than previously assumed - while Parler is hardly mentioned.
Facebook initially denied guilt
There is no doubt that many of the participants in the storming of the Capitol organized themselves online, incited each other, and used certain hashtags. This quickly raised the question of what responsibility the social platforms have.
Shortly after the events, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg called Facebook's ability to enforce its rules "never perfect," but she didn't believe Facebook played a major role.
“I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don’t have our capabilities to stop hate and don’t have our standards and don’t have our transparency.”
says Sheryl Sandberg ( see HERE ).
Court documents mention Facebook most often
The news site Forbes reviewed data from George Washington University's "Program on Extremism" ( see HERE ), which examines the storming of the Capitol. The documents list a total of 223 people who can be proven to have taken part in the storming of the Capitol.
As part of the investigation, news and posts from various social networks and platforms were evaluated. Attention was paid to plans for the “Stop the Steal” March, threats of violence as well as images, videos and live streams of the Capitol storm.
In the documents there are a total of 73 references to Facebook , 24 to YouTube , 20 to Instagram and only 8 references to Parler - the app that received a large number of right-wing users after Trump was blocked on Twitter and Facebook and was launched on January 10th by Amazon was shut down ( we reported ).
It turned out that Facebook was the rioters' preferred platform. In the days before the Capitol storm, the hashtag #StopTheSteal was used a whopping 128,000 times on Facebook.
Facebook supports education
A Facebook spokesperson told Forbes that the company is providing law enforcement with data about those present at the insurrection and removing accounts of those involved in the storming of the Capitol.
Previously, since November 30th, Facebook removed 3,200 pages, 18,800 groups, 100 events, 23,300 Facebook profiles and 7,400 Instagram accounts that violated Facebook's guidelines (keyword: militarized social movements).
Facebook has also secured the rioters' data - including private messages - and will hand it over to law enforcement authorities if they submit a legal request. Other companies, from Apple to Google to Parler, also release their data to the investigating authorities.
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Sources: Forbes , Business Insider , Stern
Notes:
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