Accountable Tech Co-Founder and Executive Director Nicole Gill released the following statement after new reporting found that Facebook is failing to shut down anti-government militia activity on its platform – and is even auto-generating group pages – in the lead-up to Election Day:

“Four years after Meta helped spur an insurrection against our government – and one week before Americans go to the polls in one of the most divisive elections in recent history – Facebook is once again enabling and encouraging violent militia organizing on its platform.

“In 2020, Donald Trump and his allies used Facebook to organize an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that killed multiple people, wounded others, and nearly destroyed our democracy. Now, Trump is laying the groundwork to do so again – this time, after years of disinformation have caused a dramatic increase in political violence and record lows in public confidence in our elections. However, instead of learning from its mistakes four years ago, Meta has gutted its trust and safety teams and rolled back its disinformation policies. Now, the company has gone as far as to actively facilitate anti-government military activity on its platform.

“Let’s be clear: Mark Zuckerberg and his team are not just abdicating their responsibility to protect user safety – they are actively inciting political violence. If the events of January 6th are repeated this year, Zuckerberg and Meta will be responsible for orchestrating yet another attack on democracy. It’s past time they were held accountable.”

Instead of redoubling election protection measures after January 6th, Meta has done the opposite:

• Meta allows politicians to falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged in their political ads and has failed to label posts that spread lies about voting.

• Meta gutted its trust and safety teams, rolled back their misinformation policies, and published guidelines that carve out exceptions for politicians to remain on the platform, even if they violate the basic content rules the rest of us are obligated to follow.

• The company is no longer temporarily demoting possible foreign disinformation while posts are fact-checked and Facebook users can now opt out of fact-checking altogether.

• Mark Zuckerberg is no longer meeting weekly with the heads of election security, and Meta will have no election war room to respond to disinformation in real time.

• Facebook has long known they were responsible for 64% of extremist group joins, leading the company to put a temporary pause on the promotion of such groups in 2020.

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