Cairo - When a new bout of fighting between rival militias engulfed the Libyan capital in recent days, badly shaking the fragile United Nations-backed government, some combatants picked up rifles and rocket launchers and headed into the streets.
Others logged on to Facebook.
As rockets rained on parts of Tripoli, hitting a hotel popular with foreigners and forcing the airport to close, and 400 prisoners escaped from a jail, a parallel battle unfolded online. On their Facebook pages, rival groups issued boasts, taunts and chilling threats - one vowing to “purify” Libya of its opponents.
Some “keyboard warriors,” as Facebook partisans are known in Libya, posted fake news or hateful comments. Others offered battlefield guidance. On one discussion page on Thursday, a user posted maps and coordinates to help target her side’s bombs at a rival’s air base.
“From the traffic light at Wadi Al Rabi, it is exactly 18km to the runway, which means it can be targeted by a 130 mm artillery,” the user, who went by the handle Narjis Ly, wrote on Facebook. “The coordinates are attached in the photo below.”
Social media enjoys outsize influence in Libya, a sparsely populated yet violently fractured country that is torn by a plethora of armed groups vying for territory and legitimacy. They battle for dominance on the streets and on smartphones.
But Facebook, by far the most popular platform, does not just mirror the chaos - it can act as a force multiplier.
Armed groups use Facebook to find opponents and critics, some of whom have later been detained, killed or forced into exile, according to human rights groups and Libyan activists. Swaggering commanders boast of their battlefield exploits and fancy vacations, or rally supporters by sowing division and ethnic hatred. Forged documents circulate widely, often with the goal of undermining Libya’s few surviving national institutions, notably its Central Bank.
Facebook is coming under scrutiny globally for how its platform amplifies political manipulation and violence.
In July, the company began culling misinformation from its pages in response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India where online rumours led to real-life violence against ethnic minorities.
On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, will defend the company’s efforts to limit disinformation and hate speech before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she will testify along with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive.
Facebook insists it is assiduously policing its raucous Libyan platform. It employs teams of Arabic-speaking content reviewers to enforce its policies, is developing artificial intelligence to pre-emptively remove prohibited content, and partners with local organizations and international human rights groups to better understand the country. A spokeswoman said: “We also don’t allow organizations or individuals engaged in human trafficking or organized violence to maintain a presence on Facebook.”
Still, illegal activity is rife on Libyan Facebook.
The New York Times found evidence of military-grade weapons being openly traded, despite the company’s policies forbidding such commerce. Human traffickers advertise their success in helping illegal migrants reach Europe by sea, and use their pages to drum up more business. Practically every armed group in Libya, and even some of their detention centres, have their own Facebook page.
Facebook removed several pages and posts after The Times flagged them to the spokeswoman on Sunday. But others remained.
“The most dangerous, dirty war is now being waged on social media and some other media platforms,” Mahmoud Shammam, a former information minister, said last week as fighting ripped through the Tripoli suburbs. “Lying, falsifying, misleading and mixing facts. Electronic armies are owned by everyone, and used by everyone without exception. It is the most deadly war.”
Shammam made his declaration, naturally, on Facebook.
Facebook helped Libyans unite in 2011 to oust Muammar Gaddafi, who for decades had forbidden people to buy fax machines or even printers without official permission.
Even then, the platform was prone to abuse.
A vicious hate campaign directed at suspected Gaddafi supporters, and which was fanned by incendiary social media posts, led to African migrants being jailed or lynched, and caused all 30,000 residents of a town called Tawergha to flee for their lives. Today, most Tawerghans live in refugee camps.
“The social media echo chamber played out in deadly ways for them,” said Fred Abrahams, an associate director at Human Rights Watch.
Facebook’s influence today is largely a product of Libya’s dysfunction. The country has no central authority and most of its TV stations and newspapers are tied to armed groups, political factions or foreign powers.
Many Libyans spend long hours stranded inside their homes because it can be dangerous to go out. The electricity can be off for 12 hours a day. So they turn to Facebook to find out what’s going on.
“The phone might be the only thing that is working,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a Paris-based analyst with North Africa Risk Consulting. “People are traumatized after the years of fake news under Gaddafi. They thirst for truth.”
Some 181 million people use Facebook every month across the Middle East and North Africa, the Facebook spokeswoman said. She replied to questions by email on the condition of anonymity in line with Facebook policy, which the company said was mainly for security reasons. For Libya’s armed factions, that reach makes the platform a powerful tool for propaganda and repression.
In the eastern city of Benghazi, which is dominated by the strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a special online unit affiliated with his militia, the Libyan National Army, scours Facebook for signs of dissent or for suspected Islamists. Some have been arrested and jailed, and others forced to flee the city, according to human rights groups.
There are similar pressures in Tripoli, where the Special Deterrence Force, a militia led by a conservative religious commander, Abdul Rauf Kara, patrols Facebook with a moralising zeal.
In August 2017, a writer named Leila Moghrabi was hit by a blizzard of Facebook attacks over a collection of short stories and poetry she edited. “I wish you get killed, not arrested,” read one typical message. Three Muslim clerics denounced Moghrabi in thundering sermons that circulated on Facebook; next came word that the Special Deterrence Force was coming to arrest her.
She leapt into a car with her husband and children and drove to Tunisia, where they live in exile. “We literally left everything behind,” she said by phone.
The fighting in Tripoli during the past week was the worst in years, leaving at least 47 people dead, including children, and more than 130 wounded, according to health officials. At least 400 prisoners escaped from a jail on Sunday after inmates overpowered guards. The chaos poses a growing threat to the UN-backed unity government, which has declared a state of emergency in the capital.
