Facebook and the Surveillance Assemblage: Policing Black Lives Matter Activists & Suppressing Dissent

Abstract

This article outlines the “social media surveillance assemblage” (Trottier 2011: 63) on Facebook, including its deployment against social activists. In particular, it traces intersecting, dynamic, and opaque data flows among Facebook, third parties, and law enforcement that undermine Black Lives Matter activists and suppress social dissent in the United States. Sources of data include interviews with academics, lawyers, and researchers as well as an in-depth examination of platform policies, Freedom of Information Act requests/lawsuits, and news articles. Theories of the surveillance assemblage (Trottier 2011), the surveillance-industrial complex (Hayes 2012), and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2015, 2019) frame the interviews and documents, demonstrating the multi-faceted nature of social media surveillance. Providing an interdisciplinary focus, this article engages with the fields of private policing, surveillance studies, and social movements literature. The article’s empirical data contribute to the existing literature by stressing the role of third parties and providing insights into the nontransparent system of surveillance on social media.