On Wednesday, Facebook took down 50 personal and professional pages connected to Roger Stone who is a long-time adviser to US President Donald Trump.
The social media platform has been under pressure from civil rights advocates, allied groups and hundreds of advertisers with more than 40 major brands across a variety of industries, including Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Unilever, joining a boycott under the StopHateForProfit campaign demanding the company crackdown on hateful and divisive messages.
Facebook officials reported that they removed Stone’s personal Facebook and Instagram pages as well as his Stone Cold Truth Facebook page with 141,000 followers.
Facebook Inc. removed Stone’s 54 Facebook accounts and 50 pages that had spent more than $300,000 on advertisements over these couple years. The reason for removal was conducts of misbehaviour.
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Facebook Inc stated that Stone and his associates had used fake accounts and followers to promote Stone’s books and posts.
This step comes on the same day as the social media platform removed accounts of two networks connected to domestic political operations in Ecuador and Ukraine and accounts tied to employees of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro’s family.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, stated that this step of taking down accounts was meant to demonstrate that artificially inflating engagement for political causes would be stopped, no matter how well connected the users are.
These steps from Facebook risk further angering Trump and other conservatives who accuse Facebook of suppressing right-wing voices.
Last month, Facebook removed a Trump re-election advertisement that included a Nazi symbol and asks users to vote for Trump, or anyone else when users touch on the topic.
Ben Nimmo, Graphika analyst, a disinformation specialist, stated that the Stone network was promoting stories about the Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks as part of the Russian interference effort during 2016 and 2017.
Last year, Stone was convicted for witness tampering and lying to Congress during investigations on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Stone responded to Facebook’s actions by saying, “I am being censored by Facebook and Twitter because my social media postings expose the truth regarding the now-discredited Mueller investigation and the Russian Collusion hoax as well as the unfairness of my trial in 2020 to the extent possible without violating the protective seal left in place by the court and because I am an outspoken supporter of President Trump.”