Portland Proud Boys Rally Promoted On Facebook Pages Despite Extremist Ban
Members of the Proud Boys and other far-right groups were using Facebook this week to promote and raise funds for an upcoming rally in Portland, Oregon, despite recent assurances from the social media giant that such extremist organizations would not be able to organize on its platform, and after a summer marred by political violence linked to the company.
On Wednesday multiple Facebook pages were active showing persons affiliated with the Proud Boys or other far-right groups promoting a rally against “antifa” and Black Lives Matter scheduled for Sept. 26 in Portland.
Links to these Facebook pages were provided to HuffPost by the Tech Transparency Project, a watchdog group. The links showed far-right groups posting propaganda videos promoting the upcoming rally, and included a page utilizing Facebook’s own fundraising tool to collect money for the event.
HuffPost asked Facebook about the pages on Wednesday evening and by early Thursday afternoon all had been removed.
“Proud Boys and promoting their events are banned from Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We’ve already removed Events, Pages and accounts tied to the upcoming rally for this reason and our work to disrupt these efforts is ongoing.”
But according to Katie Paul, director of the TTP, Facebook’s response is just yet another example of the company doing too little too late to combat extremism on its platform, removing harmful content only after being alerted to it by journalists.
“Facebook has focused more effort on its public relations for cleaning up after a tragic event than it has to address how its platform is facilitating these events in the first place,” Paul told HuffPost.
Among the pages removed by Facebook on Thursday was one called “Proud Security,” which was replete with Proud Boys symbols and imagery. The Proud Boys are a Trump-supporting, neo-fascist street gang infamous for attacking leftists at political rallies across the country, often in...
