They massively harassed their social media targets, usually doctors, politicians, and journalists, leaving thousands of comments and forcing them to delete posts. They flanked them with swastikas and called them "supporters of the Nazis" for promoting anti-Covid vaccines and described mandatory vaccination as a "health dictatorship". A real action of 'squadism', "brigading", which led Facebook to remove in Italy the No Vax network called 'V_V', made up of between one thousand and two thousand accounts. A squeeze on security that Meta, the company to which the social network is part, has undertaken in various countries, interfacing with governments, police and even other technological companies.
The anti-vaccination movement called V_V originated in Italy and France, another country where Meta carried out the operation. In our country, an investigation by the Genoa and Turin prosecutors, linked to this group, has resulted in a series of searches in recent days. "The people behind this activity have relied on a combination of authentic, duplicate and fake accounts to mass comment on the posts of Pages, editorial realities and individuals to intimidate and silence them - explain Nathaniel Gleicher and David Agranovich, who in Meta lead the security and threats divisions - Our automated and auditing systems have taken action against their comments and accounts, for various violations of our community standards. " In particular the network removed in Italy,explains the company, he did "brigading" activities, coordinating himself "to comment en masse, post mass to harass or silence other people".
The V_V network - underline Gleicher and Agranovich - has massively harassed people on social media including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and VKontakte, but Telegram is the platform used most to coordinate the attacks.
Meta explains, finally, that the accounts associated with the action of 'brigading', ie mass harassment, are removed, but not "all the contents of V_V are banned."
"We continue to monitor the situation - he concludes - and we will take action if we detect further violations, to prevent abuses on our platform and protect the people who use our services".