Facebook says it squelched a movement of fake, left-wing ‘resistance’ pages and events

Could it be that Facebook sometimes takes action against left-wing fake news just as much as against those they identify – correctly or incorrectly – as fake news on the right? Cue Bugs Bunny: Eh . . . could be!

News comes today that The Book put the kibosh on a series of fake lefty groups that were supposedly coordinating “resistance” events and purportedly reporting anti-Trump news designed to keep the troops informed. But the whole thing was a con, and it’s been put out of its misery:

Many of the named pages and accounts seem to espouse progressive or left-wing political messages. One page, “Resisters,” went as far as creating an event scheduled between Aug. 10 and 12 called “No United the Right 2 — DC.” About 2,600 Facebook users expressed interest in the event and more than 600 said they were attending, according to the company. “Inauthentic admins of the ‘Resisters’ Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event. These legitimate Pages unwittingly helped build interest in ‘No Unite Right 2 — DC’ and posted information about transportation, materials, and locations so people could get to the protests,” Facebook said. The page linking to information to the event has been taken down and Facebook said it would continue sharing information with law enforcement and Congress. Unlike previous incidents, Facebook did not seem confident it would be able to identify who was behind the campaign. Over 290,000 accounts followed “at least one of these” fake pages, which had names like “Aztlan Warriors,” a pro-Latin American page; “Black Elevation,” a Black pride page; and “Mindful Being.” Some images posted from Resisters included memes calling on President Donald Trump to resign from office while others posted images with feminist slogans. According to The New York Times, “coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishIce, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.”

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I can hear you now insisting that this was all a setup by Facebook to convince conservatives that they really are evenhanded in the enforcement of their rules, and that none of this changes the larger truth that Facebook is out to get conservatives. But I think there’s a more rational and less conspiratorial explanation. When Facebook talks about its rules and how it determines who to come down on, you’ll see two consistent themes emerge. One is that they use words like “dangerous” or “inappropriate” or “contrary to community standards” when describing the type of stuff that gets the ziggy, in addition to the ubiquitous standard of “fake.” That’s the first thing. The second thing is that they empower their individual employees to make the call in most cases, which is unavoidable because Zuckerberg can’t sit there making these decisions about absolutely everything. So you’ve got rather vague standards on the one hand, and freedom being exercised by individuals to apply their own understanding of what the standards mean. Zuckerberg admitted Facebook made a mistake when it banned Diamond & Silk, and reversed their ban. But how was that decision made in the first place? It wasn’t because Zuckerberg issued a “get conservatives” edict. It was because a liberal Trump-hating employee decided “not safe” applied to two black women who love the president. That’s absurd, of course, but when you’re empowering individuals to make these decisions, and most of your employees are liberal, this is what you’re going to get. I’ve worked in newsrooms dominated by liberal journalists. They’re not completely incapable of recognizing, or even covering, a complete scam perpetrated by their own kind. But it’s at the margins where they always give liberals the benefit of the doubt, and never give it to conservatives. Given the freedom to make judgment calls, they’ll make the calls that way all day long. Facebook lets its liberal employees apply its very vague standards, which is why Diamond & Silk are dangerous but George Takei is totally fine. (And for the record, I think both are totally fine.) But something like the scam described above is so obvious, you can’t even fail to see it when looking through your ideological lenses. I do think Facebook genuinely wants to get rid of all fake content. The problem is their understanding of what’s fake relies heavily on their own left-wing team members and their wrongheaded presumption that MSM “fact-check” columns are trustworthy. It’s not a plot against conservatives. It’s an attempt to be fair by people who don’t really know how to do that. That’s why sometimes, like here, they get it right. And sometimes we see such absurd contortions of what anyone would consider fairness.