The Proud Boys organization was banned by Facebook and Instagram in 2018. Meta is the parent company of both platforms.
Executives with the social media company Meta announced Thursday that they recently removed 480 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, and groups associated with the Proud Boys, for violating the platforms’ ban on the far-right extremist group.
Many of the pages Meta recently removed represented so-called “front groups” that hid their affiliation with the Proud Boys, accordingly.
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“The change in adversarial tactics makes it clear this group is aware that we’re tracking them and enforcing against them,” the spokesperson said.
“While there’s no silver bullet here, our approach is impacting these dangerous organisations, and we can see adversaries trying harder to hide their affiliation & change tactics,” Meta Counterterrorism Policy Lead Dina Hussein posted on Twitter. “We’ll continue to stay vigilant and share our findings.”
The social media giant used a tactic they call “strategic network disruption” to remove an entire network at once, company officials said.
