The action is the first under Facebook's new policy focused on preventing “coordinated social harm,” which company officials said is an attempt to address content from social media users who work together to spread harmful content and evade platform rules. Under its long-standing guidelines, Facebook has removed accounts that use false personas or spread hate speech or make threats of violence. The new policy is intended to catch groups that work together in an attempt to get around the rules, while still spreading harmful content. In the case of the Querdenken network, Facebook said multiple account holders used both individual and duplicate accounts to spread content that violated Facebook's rules on COVID-19 misinformation, hate speech, bullying and incitement of violence. It was that coordinated effort to deceive, along with the harmful content and a history of past violations, that prompted Facebook's action, according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy.

Source: ABC News September 16, 2021 22:07 UTC