‘Facebook took its eye off the ball’ as hundreds of thousands of posts spread election lies

Facebook’s “Groups” feature was the key site for such content, with many groups run by conspiracy theorists and people pushing claims that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump rather than the reality that he had lost. 

“LOOKS LIKE CIVIL WAR is BECOMING INEVITABLE !!!” according to one post, coming a month before January 6. “WE CANNOT ALLOW FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS TO STAND ! SILENT NO MORE MAJORITY MUST RISE UP NOW AND DEMAND BATTLEGROUND STATES NOT TO CERTIFY FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS NOW !”

After Bill Barr, then the attorney general, said the election hadn’t been stolen, one post responded, “BILL BARR WE WILL BE COMING FOR YOU,” and vowed, “WE WILL HAVE CIVIL WAR IN THE STREETS BEFORE BIDEN WILL BE PRES.”

“One post showed a Civil War-era picture of a gallows with more than two dozen nooses and hooded figures waiting to be hanged,” the Post and ProPublica found. “Other posts called for arrests and executions of specific public figures—both Democrats and Republicans—depicted as betraying the nation by denying Trump a second term.”

In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Facebook returned to enforcement against groups spreading such content, but it was a little late at that point. 

A Facebook spokesperson predictably denied that the company bears any responsibility.

”The notion that the Jan. 6 insurrection would not have happened but for Facebook is absurd,” he said in a statement. “The former President of the United States pushed a narrative that the election was stolen, including in-person a short distance from the Capitol building that day. The responsibility for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them.”

It’s absolutely true that Donald Trump pushed that narrative, and he does bear responsibility. But Facebook gave him a platform to do so—one it revoked only after the fact—and gave his followers a platform to spread the message and take it to places Trump would not explicitly go, in public at least. No, Facebook didn’t produce a message that the election had been stolen from Trump and that violent insurrection was the correct response. But it certainly closed its eyes to the fact that it was a central location from which that message was being spread, and this is only the latest example of Facebook allowing itself to be used to undermine U.S. democracy and incite violence.