Facebook is mistaking anti-fascist pages for Russian fake accounts. The shoe is now on the other foot.
According to the Daily Beast, Facebook removed “fake accounts engaged in covert influence operations against Americans.” However, the site also removed events and pages connected to the anarchist and anti-fascist movement, including an event scheduled for August 12 called No Unite the Right 2, supposedly a counter-protest to another alt-right Unite the Right event happening on the same day in Washington D.C.
Activist Lacy Macauley posted on Twitter, “So @Facebook deleted *our event* for protesting white supremacists and Nazis on August 12, thinking that we were Russian bots.” On their new page, the groups involved in the protest include Maryland Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Philly Antifa, and the Anarchist Agency.
The Daily Beast reported that Russian fake personas were actually involved in the “No Unite the Right 2” event, hence the reason why Facebook deleted it. A spokesperson for the coalition told the Beast, “When Facebook decides what is real political organizing and what's not, it takes agency out of people organizing on the ground in their own communities.” The coalition, composed of 18 actual groups, apparently will continue to plan for their event regardless of Facebook’s meddling.
On July 31, Facebook announced that it removed 32 profiles and pages from its site that were guilty of “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” No evidence for these pages’ removal was released, nor was there any sort of transparency about the process.
