According
to Italian media, the majority of the pages supported the populist
parties La Lega (The League) and the 5-Star Movement (M5S) — who currently
govern Italy in a temporary coalition.
Facebook has justified its dramatic move by claiming that the
sites shared fake news, so-called “hate speech”, and “divisive content”
regarding immigrants, vaccines, and Jewish people.
Facebook used information from a report produced by a
left-progressive NGO called Avaaz, which deals with “human rights” and
environmental campaigns.
“We thank Avaaz for sharing its research so we could
investigate,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We are committed to protecting the
integrity of the EU elections and around the world. We have removed a series of
false and duplicate accounts that violated our policies on the subject of
authenticity, as well as several pages for violation of the policy on changing
the name.”
“We have also taken action against some pages that have repeatedly
spread misinformation. We will take further measures if we find other
violations,” the spokesperson warned.
In its report, which was presented to Facebook on May
3, Avaaz said it had identified 14 Italian networks on Facebook comprising 104
pages and six groups, with a total reach of 18.2 million followers.
This week, Facebook took punitive action against 23 pages in
these networks, with a total of 2.46 million followers and 2.44 million
interactions over the last three months.
Facebook has also reportedly “weakened” pages that spread
content with allegedly false news, presumably making them less visible to
Facebook users.
The technical motivation for the closing of the pages is linked
to name changes: it is claimed they initially suggested themes that did not
seem to allude to political parties or movements, but later changed the theme.
Among the closed pages are “We want the 5-star Movement in
government”, which had 129,000 followers and almost 700,000 interactions in
three months, “Beppe Grillo for President”, “Lega Salvini Sulmona” — which had
307,000 followers” — “Lega Salvini Premier Santa Teresa of Riva”, and “We Are 5
Stars.”
The most
active page in support of the Lega party was among those closed, just as polls are showing that the Lega is currently the
party with the most support among Italians for the upcoming elections.
Facebook’s efforts in Italy to influence the European elections
are just the tip of the iceberg, Italian media noted.
According
to the Italian daily La Repubblica, on May 2
Facebook opened a “war room” in Dublin devoted full time
to the European electoral campaign, with 40 teams of engineers, scientists,
researchers, threat specialists, and experts for each country.
There are 500 people working on the elections, with the
assistance of 21 supposed “fact-checkers,” operating in 14 different languages.
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