A no-vax network in Italy has been blocked.

The Meta company removed a network of accounts linked to the anti-vaccination movement called V_V that originated in Italy and France on Facebook, as part of a series of security interventions launched in six different countries. The no-vaxes targeted doctors, journalists and politicians with "mass harassment" and "brigading".

"The people behind this activity - explains Meta who has collaborated with the government and police - have relied on a combination of authentic, duplicate and fake accounts to massively comment on the posts of Pages, editorial realities and individuals, to intimidate and silence them. . We will take action if we find further violations. "

The removed network in Italy, the company explains, carried out activities of "brigading", squading, coordinating "to comment en masse, post en masse to harass or silence other people. The brigading activity can involve both highly intimidating actions sophisticated to stifle dissent, and brutal harassment campaigns to silence different points of view ".

"While this network has massively harassed people on social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and VKontakte, Telegram is the platform it has used the most to coordinate attacks in an attempt to evade controls," explained Nathaniel Gleicher. Head of Security Policy and David Agranovich, Director, Threat Disruption of Meta.

"In their comments - they add - these accounts used the same text or manipulated images as their targets, overlaying swastikas and other symbols. They often referred to doctors, journalists and editors as 'supporters of the Nazis' for promoting anti-Covid vaccines, claiming that the compulsory vaccination will lead to 'health dictatorship' ". "During the activity of this network on our platform - underline Gleicher and Agranovich - our automatic and review systems have taken action against their comments and accounts, for various violations of our Community Standards, including hate speech, disinformation, incitement to violence, bullying and harassment. While we are not banning all of V_V's content, we continue to monitor the situation and will take action if we detect further violations, to prevent abuse on our platform and protect the people who use our services ".