Facebook removed anti-vaccine trucker protest groups run by overseas actors – By Igor Bonifacic (Engadget) / February 12, 2022
Many of the pages were scams originating in places like Vietnam and Romania.
As anti-vaccine groups in the US attempt to stage their own version of Canada’s disruptive “Freedom Convoy,” foreign content mills have worked to bolster those efforts for their own gains. This week, Facebook parent company Meta told Reuters and NBC News it recently removed several “trucker convoy” groups and pages run by scammers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and other countries.
The company said many of those groups had recently changed their names to adopt ones that involved terms like “trucker,” “freedom,” and “convoy” in hopes of taking advantage of the sudden interest in the rallies occurring across the border. Many of those same pages included links to websites that sold pro-Trump and anti-vaccine merchandise. At the same time, most of the accounts that took part in those groups were tied to real people. And so you have a situation where foreign players are trying to monetize radicalized individuals.
“Voicing opposition to government mandates is not against Meta’s policies,” a Meta spokesperson told the network. “However, we have removed multiple groups and Pages for repeatedly violating our policies prohibiting QAnon content and those run by spammers in different countries around the world.”
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