Facebook accused of facilitating extremism through ‘suggested friends’ feature

Facebook has been accused of connecting thousands of Islamic State extremists through its ‘suggested friends’ feature, according to new research shared with British news outlet The Telegraph. With Facebook’s algorithms designed to connect like-minded users, people with extremist sympathies were ‘routinely introduced to one another’, and is claimed to ‘directly [facilitate] the spread of this terrorist group on its site’’. The full report is expected to be published later this month by the Counter Extremism Project. Responding to the claims, a Facebook spokesperson said that ‘there is no place for terrorists on Facebook’ and explained the company works ‘aggressively’ the make sure that terrorist groups do not use the platform.