How autocratic governments use Facebook against their own citizens

Last month, Facebook discovered evidence of a coordinated influence campaign on its platform led by groups in Iran. On Tuesday, a pair of investigations cast new light on other ways that autocratic governments are using Facebook to terrible ends: creating brigades of influencers and paid troll armies to suppress dissent and deny the reality of human-rights atrocities within their own countries.

In The New York Times, Declan Walsh and Suliman Ali Zway examine how the “keyboard warriors” of Libya use Facebook to hunt and kill their enemies. “Armed groups use Facebook to find opponents and critics, some of whom have later been detained, killed or forced into exile, according to human rights groups and Libyan activists,” they write….

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