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Facebook and other social-media companies have been cracking down against election misinformation.
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Facebook Inc. on Monday removed a network of pages linked to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for spreading misinformation and using deceptive tactics to broaden their reach.
“We’ve removed several clusters of activity for using inauthentic behavior tactics to artificially boost how many people saw their content,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “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.”
The takedowns were first reported by the Washington Post, which said the pages had about 2.45 million followers.
The pages were flagged Friday by Avaaz, an online activist organization.
“The disinformation was sophisticated and being shared at scale through link, videos, and other memes,” Fari Quran, Avaaz’s campaign director, tweeted late Monday. “This cluster has been on our radars since August. Facebook should’ve acted earlier, but at this dangerous moment for democracy, this step is still pivotal.”
Avaaz said one of the pages was connected to Brian Kolfage, an ally of Bannon’s who was indicted along with Bannon and two others in August for allegedly defrauding contributors to a crowdfunding campaign for the border wall. They have pleaded not guilty.
Facebook’s FB, -4.99% move came after Twitter Inc. TWTR, +0.16% last week permanently suspended the account for Bannon’s podcast, after the former White House strategist endorsed the beheadings of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray in a video. Facebook also removed it, along with another Bannon video, from its platform. YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s GOOGL, +0.09% GOOG, +0.07% Google, also removed the video and blocked Bannon’s channel from uploading new videos for a week.
Bannon’s personal Facebook page has not been taken down, but has apparently been restricted from making new posts.
After being harshly criticized for failing to stop the spread of misinformation on their platforms in the 2016 presidential campaign, social-media companies have taken extra steps of late to prevent the wide dissemination of false or misleading content concerning the election.
Critics said Facebook still has not done enough this year. “They react. They never proactively do the right thing,” Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, told MarketWatch last week. “They don’t have a strategy. It’s a pinball machine approach. “
While President Donald Trump and a number of his supporters have claimed widespread election fraud, there has been no evidence of malfeasance.
