Facebook is cracking down on pages connected to Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and Breitbart News’, Stephen K. Bannon, for spreading false information about voter fraud and claiming that President-elect Joe Biden’s win was rigged in his favor.
Facebook has tracked down seven pages so far that reportedly had a total of over 2.45 million followers. The pages all pushed fake news like the “Stop the Steal” mantra that implies that Biden somehow stole votes in the election. The page was flagged by the liberal group Avaaz on Friday, The Washington Post reports. Bannon’s b.s. moved from Twitter to Facebook after the politician was banned from Twitter.
Twitter kicked Bannon off the platform after he said Trump should execute Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert who was working on the coronavirus pandemic, The Washington Post reports. Two videos were also removed from Bannon’s page for inciting violence. “We’ve removed several clusters of activity for using inauthentic behavior tactics to artificially boost how many people saw their content,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. “That includes a Group that was originally named ‘Stop the Steal,’ which later became ‘Gay Communists for Socialism’ and misled people about its purpose using deceptive tactics.”
Trump, his administration, and followers have all been working together to push out propaganda that works in Trump’s favor. “Stop the Steal” groups have gained hundreds of thousands of members. The pages that were taken down include: Brian Kolfage, Conservative Values, We Build the Wall Inc., Citizens of the American Republic, American Joe, and Trump at War.
The liberal group Avaaz said it learned about the pages after noticing that there were all connected. It added that the groups would post simultaneously and that some of the pages shared the same administrator.
“In 2016, Steve Bannon was buoyed by the Facebook algorithm and helped define the political narrative for millions of Americans,” Fadi Quran, campaign director at Avaaz, said in a statement. “Over the last few months, pages and groups connected to him pushed ‘voter fraud’ and other misinformation content to millions. He is now seeking to divide America further and spread chaos in this post-Election Day landscape, again using Facebook. Facebook has finally acted after Avaaz’s pressure, but the question is: Why did the company not act earlier?”
