Facebook apparently took down a “Stop the Steal” group accusing Democrats of trying to “nullify Republican votes” and steal the election—but not until the group had gotten hundreds of thousands of members, directing them to an outside page to maintain strength when Facebook did shut it down.

What’s more, the takedown didn’t come until after there were multiple thinly veiled calls to violence and after Mother Jones reported the group’s ties to Republican operatives, making it look a whole lot like an astroturf operation.

That outside website that “Stop the Steal” used Facebook to funnel people to was registered by a conservative digital consulting firm, Liberty Lab. Stop the Steal’s website and Facebook page also suggest links to the group “Women for America First,” which is led by the former chief executive of the Tea Party Express. Women for America First was started to protest Trump’s impeachment.

Facebook’s policy on post-election claims would seem to bar Stop the Steal on multiple grounds, and apparently the company did conclude that it couldn’t host that. Just not until the group had hundreds of thousands of members. In moments like these, it’s always worth remembering that Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy, was a key participant in the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot.