Facebook has banned praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism on its social media platforms, bolstering its efforts to tackle hate speech.
The policy will be enforced next week, the social media giant said in a blog on Wednesday.
The spotlight has turned on white supremacy and nationalism after Australian Brenton Tarrant shot dead 50 Muslims at Friday prayers in two Christchurch mosques.
Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet’s YouTube are under pressure to remove white supremacist and neo-Nazi content from their platforms.
In response, Facebook has beefed up its content monitoring teams and has taken down event pages that were used to promote and organise rallies by white supremacy groups.
The company previously allowed some white nationalist content it did not view as racist, but recently decided to change course.
“Over the past three months our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organised hate groups,” the company said.
“Going forward … we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.”
Facebook said it would also start connecting people who search for terms associated with white supremacy to an organisation called Life After Hate, focused on helping people leave hate groups.
Life After Hate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Top Comments
Who decides exactly what is white nationalism? Actually, what is white nationalism? Is it the same as white supremacy?
Facebook etc are already censoring conservatives and non-left wing voices, this seems to just be another politically correct step in ensuring that only people with the 'correct' voices are being heard.
Anyone read 1984 recently?
Conservatives believe private entities have the fundamental right to choose how they run their business. Therefore, does Facebook not have the right to decide who can and cannot use their platform?
Personally, I think Facebook should simply ban anyone who violates their Terms of Agreement, opposed to singling out specific groups. I think they'd find these groups already violate their TOA.
The key to your question lies in the sentence 'academics who are experts in race relations'. The rise of Communism, Fascism managed to survive and thrive without Facebook and this move will only drive extremist groups are underground.
If it so happens that conservatives and non-left wing people are saying hateful and nasty things, maybe they then should have a look at themselves and instead of blaming everyone else, blame themselves for posting things that are not fit to be posted. Just a thought.
Problem with hate speech is everyone defines hate speech as speech that is critical of their own views.
I bet all the leftys dont think the hatefull things said about Pauline Hanson are "hatespeech"
While I like what they are trying to do I struggle to accept how much censorship they can do. We saw in the US election that social media can play a massive role in shaping current events, where do we draw the line. Sure most people would accept this one, but the next one, and the one after?
I personally think that private social networks hosting the majority of the world's internet users and then using tailored algorithms to choose what they see should simply not be possible. I am for democratisation of facebook including an independent, elected leader.. but since the right care so much about the right of businesses, then I think they should also support facebook flexing its rights like this.
Hitler was elected lesder of Germany, so I am not sure if your suggestion is very practical. Your suggestion of tailored algorithms sounds most undemocratic and somewhat Orwellian.
are you joking? the tailored algorithms are what we already experience on facebook, and part of what i am against