In June 2020, Facebook announced that it had taken down hundreds of groups and pages on its platform associated with the violent anti-government boogaloo movement, one of several major purges of extremist material by Facebook that year to address extremists’ use of its platform. Despite efforts by the boogaloo movement to camouflage itself to retain a Facebook foothold, the social media company’s efforts were largely effective, and after the deplatforming, it became difficult to find large and active boogaloo spaces on Facebook.
However, in recent months, several new boogaloo pages have emerged on Facebook, hiding among libertarian groups and pages that also share memes advocating for violence. One of the ways they have been able to do this is by using unconventional naming structures for their pages (such as “Char Broil Tru infrared grilling”) that requires users to recognize the group’s intent via its content. Though these new Facebook boogaloo groups typically are far smaller and produce less content than their predecessors did in 2019-2020, the emergence of such pages highlights the need for Facebook to take a proactive stance to ensure that boogalooers do not successfully reestablish themselves on the platform.
