Facebook Penalizes Groups Following Capitol Riot Backlash: WSJ

Facebook Inc FB introduced new penalties for interest-based forums called Groups that are flagged for violating its community standards to make amends for their contribution to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot vandalism, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Facebook’s internal research conclusion over the Groups’ role in election-related conspiracy theories, including “Stop the Steal,” triggered the initiative.
• Facebook’s heavily promoted Group forums attracted millions of users, with over half of the platform’s 2.8 billion monthly active users’ involvement in at least five Groups.
• The social media company admitted the toxicity and growth of some of its largest civic-based Groups after increased flak over the content and user censorship. Research findings rendered 70% of the top 100 most active U.S. Civic Groups were as non-recommendable over hate, misinformation, bullying, and harassment issues.
• A small part of Facebook’s user base was reportedly casting doubt on the certified coronavirus vaccine’s safety and efficacy.
• Facebook would impose huge penalties on Groups for breach against misinformation, hate speech, and other types of harmful content.
• Facebook would punish administrator groups for repeated violations of the policy guidelines. It would stop recommending groups with multiple violations to other users and reduce the distribution of posts from those groups in people’s feeds. Users who try to join a flagged group would get warning alerts.
• Twitter Inc’s TWTR recently launched strike system penalized users posting misleading information on topics including the COVID-19 vaccine and election integrity.
• Price action: FB shares traded lower by 1.29% at $279.27 in the premarket session on the last check Thursday.