oakland facebook on thursday banned a large group called stop the steal that supporters of president donald trump were using to organize protests against the presidential vote count some members had called for violence while many falsely claimed that democrats are stealing the election from republicansthough the group amassed more than 350000 members before facebook took it down it was just one of several smaller groups that popped up as vote counting extended for days in several battleground states inside the groups members and organizers tried to ensure they would get around facebooks moderators and trolls who might report or mock themin line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension we have removed the group stop the steal which was creating realworld events facebook said in a statement the group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the groupfacebook said it will continue to watch for activity that violates its rules and will take action if it does as of thursday afternoon a copycat stop the steal group was growing steadily nearing 13000 members and others were easily searchable on facebookinside the groups members posted baseless claims of voter fraud and organized protests calls for violence were not immediately apparent although the the center for countering digital hate shared a screenshot of one post in the nowbanned group that read neither side is going to concede time to clean the guns time to hit the streetsin the new group administrators who create and moderate groups on facebook cautioned people to keep posts civil and vent frustrations without making threats they scrupulously warned members that they will remove anything that calls for violence and said they were making plans to move the group to other lessmoderated platformsimran ahmed ceo of the center for countering digital hate which pressured facebook to take down the group said while its true that all this seems like a game of whackamole the moles are slowly learning their lessonby taking out the largest one it sent a message to others he saidbut ahmed said it should not be so difficult to get facebook to take action on such a large group calling for violencethere is a systemic issue with facebook groups being exploited by people spreading misinformation hate and inciting violence he said its a problem they have known about for a long time and they continue to fail to take proper action its generally only when a lot of attention is placed on something that they actby thursday afternoon facebook banned the hashstopthesteal hashtag too but it easily could have done so earlier the term and similar ones were mentioned nearly 120000 times on websites and social media platforms throughout the day tuesday according to analysis from media intelligence firm zignal labsalso on thursday twitter banned an account used by former trump advisor steve bannon the rightwing provocateur who used the handle warroompandemic had