Deplatforming candidate: Male State Facebook Community
Maybe misogynist Russian nationalist groups shouldn't be on Facebook
Male State (Мужское государство) is a misogynist Russian nationalist group focused on online harassment. They identify with the so-called Luhansk/Donetsk People's Republic.
In 2021, as reported by BBC on October 19, they were declared an extremist organization by Russia's government for anti-gay and misogynist attacks online - which, considering how bigoted Russia's policies towards LGBTQ folks are in general, is really saying something. Like, you have to really try to get condemned for that.
On March 11th Michael Colborne at Bellingcat identified multiple statements of pretty much outright hate speech from official Male State Telegram channels in support of the war on Ukraine.
On a lark, I took a look to verify they weren't on Meta platforms - because, I mean, Facebook couldn't be that bad at this, could they?
Nope they are that bad at this.
They have 12k members on their community Page: https://www.facebook.com/anythemes
A look at post history shows a number of fairly ordinary low-quality "lifestyle" memes mixed in with shockingly racist and misogynist content. The following memes are translated via Yandex OCR:
This is all fairly ordinary considering.
There are numerous Meta Community Standards: Hate Speech violations, Tiers 1, 2 and 3.
There are also Meta Community Standards: Dangerous Organizations and Individuals violations. Quoting the relevant section at Tier 3:
Tier 3 focuses on entities that may repeatedly engage in violations of our Hate Speech or Dangerous Organizations policies on-or-off the platform or demonstrate strong intent to engage in offline violence in the near future, but have not necessarily engaged in violence to date or advocated for violence against others based on their protected characteristics. This includes Militarized Social Movements, Violence-Inducing Conspiracy Networks, and individuals and groups banned for promoting hatred. Tier 3 entities may not have a presence or coordinate on our platforms.
We recognize that users may share content that includes references to designated dangerous organizations and individuals to report on, condemn, or neutrally discuss them or their activities. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of discussions while simultaneously limiting risks of potential offline harm. We thus require people to clearly indicate their intent when creating or sharing such content. If a user's intention is ambiguous or unclear, we default to removing content.
On this basis the Male State (Мужское государство) page and all associated admins should be deplatformed with extreme prejudice.
I look forward to either Meta’s timely action, or their provision of yet more proof of their systemic and thoroughgoing - indeed, willful - provision of social networking services to absolutely terrible people in violation of their own Community Standards.
…yeah probably the latter.
And this was Wednesday.