Right-wing militias continue to recruit and organise on Facebook, watchdog report finds

Facebook continues to host more than 201 pages and 13 groups tied to far-right militias, more than two months after a deadly attack on the US Capitol and seven months after the company announced it would take action against similar groups, according to a March report from a tech watchdog.

The report from the Tech Transparency Project arrives as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify to members of Congress alongside other tech giants about “Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation”.

According to TPP, the platform is “auto-generating pages” for some organisations – “effectively expanding the reach of the movement” – and directing users who “like” certain militia to similar groups, “helping these organisations potentially recruit and radicalise users”.

Facebook announced a platform-wide crackdown on “militarised social movements” on 19 August following FBI testimony about the growing threat of far-right and white supremacist groups in the US.

But TTP found that 26 of militia-linked pages and six groups were created in the months that followed. Roughly 70 per cent of militia-linked Facebook pages on the platform have “militia” in their name.

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“That’s a hard-to-miss affiliation, especially for a company that says its artificial intelligence systems are successfully detecting and removing policy violations like hate speech and terrorist content,” the report says.

In a statement to The Independent, a spokesperson for Facebook say the company is “reviewing the accuracy of the claims and the content referenced in this report”.

“We have banned over 890 militarised social movements and removed more than 3,400 Pages, 19,500 groups, 120 events, 25,300 Facebook profiles and 7500 Instagram accounts representing them; but simply using the word ‘militia’ does not violate our policies,” the spokesperson said.

The organisation also found 31 militia-linked profiles that displayed their militia links in their names or in other content.

A group named “Texas Militia” launched on 6 January, TTP found. According to the report: “The administrator who created the group warned that ‘modern technology has enabled radicals to subvert the process by which we elect our representatives,’ adding ‘we must be prepared … to defend our rights and prevent the takeover of our great nation by radicals, uphold the Constitution and preserve our way of life.”

The report also arrives as President Joe Biden’s administration targets domestic violence extremists, which pose an “elevated threat” to the US in 2021, according to a newly unclassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.

Domestic violence extremists motivated by “a range of ideologies and galvanised by recent political and societal events” pose an “elevated threat” to the US in 2021, according to the report.

False narratives spread across social media about the 2020 presidential election, the Capitol insurrection, and conspiracy theories and conditions related to the Covid-19 crisis “will almost certainly spur some DVEs to try to engage in violence this year”, the agencies reported.

The US Attorney’s office has charged more than 300 people for their role in the insurrection at the Capitol. Federal law enforcement expects to bring dozens more charges.