Facebook Has Been Profiting From Boogaloo Ads Promoting Civil War And Unrest

Facebook said on Tuesday it was banning content associated with the "Boogaloo" extremist group. BuzzFeed News found the company has been running Boogaloo ads advocating for violence for months.

Jeff Kowalsky / Getty Images Armed protesters outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, May 20. Their aloha shirts are a kind of uniform for members of the Boogaloo extremist groups.

On Sunday, the @docscustomknives Instagram account placed an ad on the popular photo-sharing social network advocating that people “join the militia, fight the state.” As clips from action movies play, showing police officers being shot and killed, music blares with lyrics proclaiming, "We ain't scared of no police / We got guns too."

As of Tuesday afternoon, the ad was still online. Several hashtags in the ad — including #Boogaloo, #BoogalooBois, and #BoogalooMemes — connect the ad to “Boogaloos,” a catchphrase for anti-government extremists who have called for violence against the police and state officials and advocated for another Civil War in the US.

BuzzFeed nEWS / Via Facebook: ads A current ad on Instagram advocated that people "join the militia" and "fight the state," while using hashtags associated with the extremist Boogaloo movement.

This ad is just one of several pieces of paid content related to the Boogaloo movement on Facebook and Instagram that were uncovered by BuzzFeed News; this is despite claims by Facebook that it was doing more to take action against the group. The @docscustomknives may be the most recent, but it is far from the only Boogaloo ad that has run on Facebook or its photo-sharing site, Instagram. As right-wing extremists have used the company’s tools to organize, the world’s largest social network has also profited from ads pushing for white supremacy. On Tuesday, Facebook said it would designate the Boogaloo movement as "a dangerous organization," banning it from the platform and Instagram. The company removed 220 Facebook accounts, 28 pages, and 106 groups, as well as 95 Instagram accounts, which made up what it called a “violent US-based anti-government network.” Facebook also removed 400 additional groups and more than 100 pages that shared similar content. The account that ran the Instagram ad was not among those that the company removed. A person associated with @docscustomknives did not return a request for comment. “That does not sound good,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News when a reporter described the content of the Boogaloo ads. They noted that the ads would be sent to a team for further review and that Tuesday’s enforcement was “just the start of the impact” on Boogaloo groups. “We will continue to monitor for symbols and content that the violent network uses and update police and enforcement,” the spokesperson said. “If it’s organic content, it will certainly come down, as well as in ads.”

That may not be enough to mollify some of Facebook's critics. Tech Transparency Project Director Katie Paul told BuzzFeed News that when Facebook accepted money from Boogaloo supporters and sympathizers, it amplified the movement. “The company is not just failing to address the fact that its platform is really feeding this echo chamber of supporters, but also the fact that it’s profiting off that movement that is predicated on violence,” she said. Derived from the name of a 1984 movie, the term “Boogaloo” covers a range of extremists, including some believed to be violent. Earlier this month, Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant and suspected Boogaloo member, was charged with killing a federal security officer and a police deputy in California. The Anti-Defamation League has called Boogaloo "an old joke [that evolved] into a catchphrase for mass violence." The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that it "emerged concurrently in antigovernment and white power online spaces in the early 2010s. In both of these communities, 'boogaloo' was frequently associated with racist violence and, in many cases, was an explicit call for race war." Facebook’s enforcement came after watchdog groups warned about right-wing extremist organizations organizing online under the Boogaloo moniker. In April, the Tech Transparency Project found 125 Facebook Groups with an aggregate of "tens of thousands of members" tied to the word “Boogaloo,” more than 60% of which had been created in the last three months. And ads featuring Boogaloo keywords have been running on Facebook and Instagram for months.

BuzzFeed News / Via Facebook: ads Facebook's Ad Library shows that Hoplite Armor, a body armor company, was able to advertise on the social network last year using hashtags including #Boogaloo and #CivilWar.