Friend,

It’s a step in the right direction: Facebook has announced that it will stop recommending political groups to its users.

This past fall, Accountable Tech led the charge in making clear through our Stop All Group Recommendations Campaign why group recommendations are so dangerous for the spread of extremism and misinformation online. Some toplines:

• Facebook’s own research has shown that 64% of extremist group joins were due to their platform’s recommendation tools.
• These groups served as organizing platforms for acts of violence, like the Capitol insurrection on January 6th.
• Extremist Facebook groups are also breeding grounds for disinformation about the 2020 elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for dangerous conspiracy theories like QAnon.

Supporters like yourself have been critical to our ability to keep up the pressure on Facebook. But, we can’t let up with this one win. Your contributions help fuel our work to hold social media companies to account and demand action. Can you chip in to help us keep up our work?

While this is a win for the integrity of our social media platforms and our democracy, it’s long overdue. It’s also only one small piece within a much broader puzzle of how we’re advocating for the social media companies at the center of today’s information ecosystem to strengthen the integrity of their platforms and our democracy.

Collectively, we have the power to make social media companies do better -- but only if we keep up our efforts. We have more to do in order to ensure that companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are transparent, pro-facts, and anti-hate.

As we head into 2021, Accountable Tech will continue working to hold technology companies accountable for the role they play in shaping our information ecosystem. Can we count on you to support our work by donating just $1 today?

-- Jesse Lehrich