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Full Article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/14/18679598/facebook-hate-groups-law-enforcement-police-officers-racism-islamaphobia

Should be very concerning to civil society, especially the 150 officers that were found to be associating with anti-government militias. It's well known that these militias and white supremacist groups are actively trying to recruit police and military personnel to their causes...these aren't groups that just looking to grow and expand, these are groups that are preparing for war.

Any police officer who disgraces his uniform by joining a anti-government militia should be stripped of his rank and discharged. This is a betrayal of the highest order.

Facebook also announced a shift away from the News Feed and toward private groups as a way to lessen the influence of its algorithms. The shift also, in a way, absolves the company of responsibility for moderation. If public posts and pages wane in favor of private group activity, the logic is that those groups will self-moderate, and that by nature of being private they’ll reduce the reach of potentially harmful activity, too.

Yes, this will definitely make Facebook less toxic. By washing its hands of all responsibility, Facebook has taken the high ground. I'm sure hate groups will self-moderate. /s

Now, I'm not saying Facebook should crack down on every group that appears "extremist" (or "radical" or whatever term you want to use) as that's quite subjective, but having self-moderated groups seems like a step backwards. Removing groups altogether seems the better solution.

From another article linked in the original:

When tapping in, users will now get a personalized feed of updates from their various groups as well as recommendations to join new groups based on their interests.

There’s also a new feature, called Meet New Friends, that Facebook is seeding throughout the entire app to help people connect with strangers that have shared interests or real-world connections, like working for the same employer or attending the same school. Facebook says it is integrating Meet New Friends into its new groups design to help people meet who may have a shared online interest and a real-world connection that means they can connect in the real world.

Facebook is making a concerted effort to ensure groups are visible in every part of the app, so it’ll start promoting groups in areas like Marketplace and Watch.

As the previous quote says, "by nature of being private they’ll reduce the reach of potentially harmful activity," but Facebook will still promote groups and recommend people to join new groups based on their interests. What if they're interested in hate groups? And now with Meet New Friends, you'll be able to more easily join your local hate group in person. Way to go Facebook!

If two people have a mutual interest of white supremacy, will Facebook connect them?

I see the idea where without the news feed groups will have a harder time spreading by people sharing posts by them, but it wouldn't make much of a difference in cases like this where officers were apparently promoting the groups directly to each other.

Removing groups altogether seems highly unlikely and undesirable. There's reasons why Facebook wants to pivot toward groups beyond just absolving themselves of moderation responsibility.

Facebook groups are used for many useful things: student bodies ("Example University Class of 2020" for instance), school clubs, community organizing, buy/sell marketplaces, and meme groups (including the highly influential subtle asian traits and New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens) are just some of the few that come to mind. Personally I joined Facebook because my school clubs used them as the primary means of communication and organizing, and I continue to use Facebook largely due to the groups. Banning every single one of them seems rather counterproductive.

Reddit has shown promise by enforcing rules such as ones against calls to violence, and banning subreddits with lack of proper moderation in this regard. I think a model similar to that one should perhaps be applied to Facebook groups.

I mean, I'm in a couple of video-game centric groups right now, and they're a blast.  That, and I'm also in a group of online friends of mine from a now-extinct forum we used to be a part of for a couple of years.

The former, I'm fine being without, but I'd prefer not having the latter suddenly disappear because Facebook decided to remove groups because they can't think of better ways to moderate.  Just because they're refusing to take a stance on anything (because they want to remain "neutral") doesn't mean everyone should be removed from their groups as a consequence.

Actually, looking back the idea makes me think of IMDB's change up they did.

Some time ago, IMDB used to have messageboards where you could talk about the various content (shows, actors etc...) on little mini boards on every page.

The problem is, the moderators were never really doing their job, so there were a lot of trolling threads, flaming threads/posts, you know the drill.

Rather than actually getting the mods into gear, IMDB decided to just completely remove the messageboards across the website, so now the only user input comes from reviews...which, like most review places, are normally heavily skewed because of paid ones that get pushed to the front of the page.

Reddit has shown promise by enforcing rules such as ones against calls to violence, and banning subreddits with lack of proper moderation in this regard. I think a model similar to that one should perhaps be applied to Facebook groups.

The problem is that Facebook has no incentive to implement something like this.  Their entire business model is based upon generating clicks, and the most effective way to increase user time on platform/get more interaction is by generating more outrageous or inflammatory content.  And because Zuckerberg has shown no interest in completely removing the profit aspect of the company, or even partly controlling it, Facebook sends mixed messages.  To Congress and the public, everything is about how Facebook will reduce its personal responsibility for extremism on its platforms.  To shareholders, its emphasis is an expansion of user time on platform and increased user interaction.  The current trainwreck to me seems to be largely the result of an incongruity in the way Facebook operates.  It simultaneously is viewed as a utility of sorts by the government and as a major advertising market by its shareholders.  The result is Facebook's "solutions" which remove company responsibility for content while emphasizing groups—which have been identified by algorithms as generating the most interacted-with content.  What the algorithm fails to consider, however, is that the content generated is increasingly inflammatory/radical.  The political groups are echo chambers 9/10 times, which serves to further radicalize the population into little ingroups.  While this microfragmentation is good for generating activity, it isn't healthy for wider society because it serves to further isolate groupings and break down areas where everyone is forced to engage in common dialogue. 

tl;dr: not sure Facebook is willing to implement any actual constructive policy, because its profits/growth are fundamentally at odds with being a responsible company.

Reddit has shown promise by enforcing rules such as ones against calls to violence, and banning subreddits with lack of proper moderation in this regard. I think a model similar to that one should perhaps be applied to Facebook groups.

The problem is that Facebook has no incentive to implement something like this.  Their entire business model is based upon generating clicks, and the most effective way to increase user time on platform/get more interaction is by generating more outrageous or inflammatory content.  And because Zuckerberg has shown no interest in completely removing the profit aspect of the company, or even partly controlling it, Facebook sends mixed messages.  To Congress and the public, everything is about how Facebook will reduce its personal responsibility for extremism on its platforms.  To shareholders, its emphasis is an expansion of user time on platform and increased user interaction.  The current trainwreck to me seems to be largely the result of an incongruity in the way Facebook operates.  It simultaneously is viewed as a utility of sorts by the government and as a major advertising market by its shareholders.  The result is Facebook's "solutions" which remove company responsibility for content while emphasizing groups—which have been identified by algorithms as generating the most interacted-with content.  What the algorithm fails to consider, however, is that the content generated is increasingly inflammatory/radical.  The political groups are echo chambers 9/10 times, which serves to further radicalize the population into little ingroups.  While this microfragmentation is good for generating activity, it isn't healthy for wider society because it serves to further isolate groupings and break down areas where everyone is forced to engage in common dialogue. 

tl;dr: not sure Facebook is willing to implement any actual constructive policy, because its profits/growth are fundamentally at odds with being a responsible company.

Very true, and I think this is also why Reddit, though better at this, still only tends to act when media coverage occurs and their advertiser sources are thus threatened.