(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

Facebook is a company that spends billions of dollars on its security and enforcement. But its ability to keep banned users off the platform leaves a lot to be desired. 

The tech giant has been under intense scrutiny for the past few years about the spread of misinformation on its platform. It has tightened the rules, adding fact checks and increasingly removing fake news and lies. These changes have caught up with Australian misinformation super-spreaders like Craig Kelly, Pete Evans and Reignite Democracy Australia, who have been banned from the platform.

But at the same time the platform’s rules leave gaping holes that allow nearly anyone to easily evade a ban. It’s against the company’s rules to let people who have been banned create similar pages, and yet many users have returned in one form or another.

Here’s Crikey’s guide to the easy ways that anyone can avoid a Facebook ban.

1. Run for politics

Facebook told Guardian Australia that the tens of thousands of dollars worth of advertisements featuring Craig Kelly run from the United Australia Party Facebook page do not violate the platform’s rules. The fact that the page was for the party broadly and not Kelly specifically, despite his prominent placement, means that it is not considered ban evasion. 

Similarly, Pete Evans’ Facebook page for his since-aborted run for Senate for Rod Culleton’s Great Australian Party was also reviewed as acceptable by Facebook, despite his “Chef Pete Evans” page being banned — that is, a page for the exact same person.

2. Use a business or group as your front

Another trick is to have a business as a front for your content. Pete Evans has also maintained a presence on the platform with a Facebook page for Evolve Network TV, where he posts pictures of his cooking and links to his podcast featuring anti-vaxxers, cryptocurrency boosters and self-help gurus.

Far-right provocateur Avi Yemini has also been able to work around his Facebook ban using both a repurposed Facebook page for former political group Liberty Alliance, and the Rebel News Australia page, to almost exclusively post his own content. That’s after he was banned from Facebook for hate speech. Facebook has been made aware of his pages but left them up.

3. Just claim you’re a different part of the same outfit

Anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown group Reignite Democracy Australia was banned from Facebook for misinformation. But that hasn’t stopped the group from creating a number of state-based groups to continue to undermine vaccine hesitancy on the platform. 

(Image: Facebook)

This, it appears, is just a result of a lack of enforcement. But since Australia’s most prominent anti-vaccine groups can easily evade one of the world’s most sophisticated tech companies, it doesn’t instil confidence in Facebook’s ability to police its own platform.