So, who's going to deplatform Facebook?
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Just after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer admitted the company’s ability to enforce its own rules was “never perfect.” About the shocking events of the day, she added: “I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate and don't have our standards and don't have our transparency,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer, shortly after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6.
Sandberg was later criticized for downplaying her employer’s role as a platform for the organizers of the siege. But Facebook was far and away the most cited social media site in charging documents the Justice Department filed against members of the Capitol Hill mob, providing further evidence that Sandberg was, perhaps, mistaken in her claim. Facebook, however, claims that the documents show the social media company has been especially forthcoming in assisting law enforcement in investigating users who breached the Capitol.
Forbes reviewed data from the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University, which has collated a list of more than 200 charging documents filed in relation to the siege. In total, the charging documents refer to 223 individuals in the Capitol Hill riot investigation. Of those documents, 73 reference Facebook. That’s far more references than other social networks. YouTube was the second most-referenced on 24. Instagram, a Facebook-owned company, was next on 20. Parler, the app that pledged protection for free speech rights and garnered a large far-right userbase, was mentioned in just eight.
The references are a mix of public posts and private messages sent on each platform, discussing plans to go to the Stop the Steal march, some containing threats of violence, as well as images, videos and livestreams from the breach of the Capitol building.
Alternative social media site Parler was banned from using Amazon’s online infrastructure in the wake of the riot due its alleged connection to the violence, but was only used by eight people charged, Forbes reported. Both Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores. (RELATED: Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Ripped For Tweet That Seemed To Mock Parler’s Deplatforming)
Parler did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg had previously assigned culpability for the riot to Parler and Gab, another smaller platform.
“I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate, don’t have our standards and don’t have our transparency,” she said on Jan. 11, according to The Washington Post. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller.
Facebook has struggled in the past to moderate content from extremist groups on both the left and the right. A New Zealand man who killed 49 worshipers at a mosque in 2019 used the Facebook Live feature to film the mass shooting.
Facebook announced in August 2020 that it would limit the ability of far-left groups under the antifa umbrella to organize on the platform. The social media giant removed over 900 groups and 500 individual pages associated with antifa at the time.
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I've been shouting to either trust-bust them or treat them as a public utility.
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@jolly said in So, who's going to deplatform Facebook?:
I've been shouting to either trust-bust them or treat them as a public utility.
Well, as Jon pointed out Parler was deplatformed because they didn't have adequate systems in place to moderate
hateinappropriateinsurrectionistviolentforbidden speech.Whatever systems Facebook had, obviously, were ineffective.
