More than a month after Facebook banned some white nationalist, white supremacist and other hate groups, they remain active on the platform and continue to use it for recruitment.

Facebook announced bans of known extremist groups following the deadly attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand. Now, a researcher says that not only are banned groups still active on the platform, but that the company is failing to identify them itself, or to react quickly or effectively when others do.

“Facebook likes to make a PR move and say that they’re doing something but they don’t always follow up on that,” Megan Squire, an Elon University computer science professor who researches online extremism, told a joint BuzzFeed News/Toronto Star investigation.

Squire says she provided the company with a list of groups that have made a comeback on the platform, including those who participated in the Charlottesville Unite The Right rally.

Facebook removed all those groups, and said in a written statement that “individuals and organizations who spread hate, attack, or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are have no place on our services. We proactively look for bad actors, and investigate concerns when they are raised.”

One of those groups is the Proud Boys, which used Facebook for organizing, promotion and recruitment of more than 35 functioning regional chapters, according to an investigation by TechCrunch.

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Although it was banned from Facebook last October after its members were filmed attacking three protesters in New York, Squire said the group was able to return to Facebook by slightly altering its name. One of its new pages was called “PB Canada” and included a link to a Telegram channel used to communicate with supporters. Another Facebook page, “West is the Best II: Electric Boogaloo,” directly pointed its fans to the Proud Boys USA website.

“They’re not so great at following up if the groups rebrand,” Squire said.

Facebook’s head of public policy in Canada said that while the company proactively removed some hate groups, it also relies on tips from users, journalists and other sources when banned personalities make it back on the platform.

Kevin Chan described it as “more of an arms race” than a game of whack-a-mole, as Facebook tries to keep hate groups off its platform and banned users figure out new ways to get back on.

“Every time, we are learning. Now we presume they’re also learning,” Chan said.

“But the trend line is that it is going to get really hard for people to do this, so hard to the point where … they’re probably going to go somewhere else.”

But while the groups themselves are banned, individual members can remain on Facebook and continue recruiting. A Canadian blog called Racist Sudbury documented how one member of the banned group “Soldiers of Odin” created a new Facebook profile with the username “S.O.O.Recruiting.Sudbury.” He invited people to join the group’s activities, and cross-posted content to groups such as Yellow Vest Canada and the conservative Canada Proud page.

A group with nearly 7,000 members called “Sons of Odin” is also still on Facebook, along with copycats that sell Soldiers of Odin swag. But when Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, reported the group for hate speech, Facebook responded that its “community standards” were not violated.

“If the group slightly rebrands to Patriots of Odin, they seem to be unable to figure out,” Squire said.

“League of the South” is another example of a group that was banned but whose members remain on Facebook, promoting their own pages, she said.

Squire reported an Indiana-based Ku Klux Klan group to Facebook in November after noticing that it was using a Facebook page to organize events and rallies. When she learned the group was holding a rally in Ohio last weekend, Squire checked her inbox and saw her report from last year was still under review.

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“This is literally the Klan we’re talking about,” she said.

As a result of sporadic enforcement, hate groups are able to not only continue spreading propaganda and organizing, but to make the conversation on Facebook more extreme. A common tactic is for the groups to swarm other pages’ comment sections, which is known as “raiding” or “brigading.”

“Some of these extremist groups have these adventure pages,” Squire said. “They go on mainstream pages and try to make the conversation more extreme.”

Facebook’s own recommendation engine plays a role. The first auto-generated page suggestion on the new Proud Boys Canada page is “West is the Best Magazine,” which promotes the group and sells its merchandise. Removing those algorithmic suggestions could help people avoid falling down extremist rabbit holes, Squire said.

Craig Silverman is the media editor of BuzzFeed News. Jane Lytvynenko is a reporter for BuzzFeed News.

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