A global investigation conducted by The Guardian newspaper in conjunction with the Queensland University of Technology has accused an Israel-based group of managing and profiting from 21 far-right Facebook pages that are spreading anti-Islamic content online
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th December, 2019) A global investigation conducted by The Guardian newspaper in conjunction with the Queensland University of Technology has accused an Israel-based group of managing and profiting from 21 far-right Facebook pages that are spreading anti-Islamic content online.The newspaper reported that its findings, published on Friday, were the result of a two-year investigation into the unnamed group's activities, which began in 2015. According to the report, the Israel-based group is given access to organically-created pages by other social media users, and then begins to spread anti-Islamic content.
The Israel-based group stands accused of managing 21 far-right pages that published over 5,600 posts in October 2019 alone, and has an audience in excess of 1 million followers. The group targeted social media users in a range of countries, including the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, Austria, Israel and Nigeria.
Investigators discovered that ten of the pages launched an attack on Australia's first female Muslim senator, Mehreen Faruqi.
"By allowing racist and misleading posts, social media giants like Facebook ... are profiteering from the proliferation of hate speech and abuse," Faruqi said in the report.
Social media posts directed followers to advert-filled websites, which investigators claimed was a means to profit from its content. According to one page administrator who spoke to The Guardian, he did not know that the group was making money from the social media posts.
"They weren't upfront about it because as much as I saw in the message ... there was no talk about making money," an administrator of a pro-Trump social media page based in Nigeria said, as quoted by The Guardian.
The latest investigation raises further questions as to the ability of social media sites, such as Facebook, to manage and react to hate content. In May, a Europe-wide investigation conducted by the international campaign group Avaaz revealed that more than 500 far-right accounts, with a following of more than 32 million people, was spreading disinformation and hate content on Facebook.
