Facebook targets German anti-lockdown movement

Facebook has cracked down on anti-Covid restriction groups in Germany, removing dozens of accounts that contribute to “co-ordinated social harm”.

Facebook has cracked down on the anti-Covid restriction movement in Germany, removing dozens of accounts that contribute to “co-ordinated social harm”.

Almost 150 accounts and pages on Facebook and Instagram — linked to anti-lockdown demonstrators in the European nation — have been taken off the platform, under a new policy focused on groups that spread misinformation or incite violent.

The Querdenken movement includes vaccine and mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and some far-right extremists, and has long protested German virus measures.

One post from such an account included a debunked claim that the Covid-19 jab was responsible for creating virus variants, while another wished death upon police officers who broke up violent anti-lockdown protests in Berlin.

According to Reuters, Facebook’s security teams have expanded the tactics used to take down influence operations using fake accounts to do more wholesale shutdowns of co-ordinated groups of real-user accounts causing harm, through mass reporting or brigading.

Facebook has cracked down on the anti-Covid restriction movement in Germany, removing dozens of accounts that contribute to “co-ordinated social harm”. Picture: Denis Charlet/AFP

Head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, told reporters that the social media giant has also been working for several months to use these tactics against “co-ordinated social harm”.

“Simply sharing a belief or affinity with a particular movement or group wouldn’t be enough”, though, to warrant a similar response, he said.

The changes could have a major impact on how Facebook handles organised political and social movements on its sites – after months of scrutiny over its treatment of anti-vaccine and Covid-19 misinformation.

Some Querdenken adherents have been put under surveillance by Germany domestic intelligence agency, as the movement has become increasingly radicalised and protests have started to attract neo-Nazis and other extremists.

The group is the most visible anti-lockdown movement in Germany, and has drawn thousands to its demonstrations in Berlin, earning criticism from Germany’s parliament president, Wolfgang Schäuble, who has urged people not to be fooled by “cheap slogans”.

“If practically all experts worldwide say the coronavirus is dangerous and vaccination helps, then who actually has the right to say, ‘Actually, I’m smarter than that?’” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

“To me, that is an almost unbearable level of arrogance.”

The Querdenken movement includes vaccine and mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and some far-right extremists, and has long protested German virus measures. Picture: Stringer/Getty Images

In early August, News Corp reported that Australians were being targeted with dangerous misinformation about vaccine risks, medical cover-ups, ‘lethal’ lockdowns, and questions about whether Covid-19 is actually harmful by a network of high-profile social media influencers.

The top 10 pages – which include One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, the Informed Medical Opinions Party and Rod Culleton’s Great Australian Party – boast more than 100,000 followers on Facebook alone – and while the social platform and YouTube have been pulling down posts considered risky – health and digital media experts want misinformation superspreaders deplatformed.

After a new study found that Facebook’s algorithms were drawing users to the pages of conspiracy groups, the social media giant said it would “take action against pages or groups that violate our policies”.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have removed 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation, labelled over 167 million pieces of false content, and connected over two billion people with authoritative information through tools like our Covid Information Centre,” a spokesman for the company told The Australian.