Today Facebook banned some high profile politician and far-right leaders including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous”. Facebook said that these profiles over violation of its policy against Dangerous individuals and organizations.
After evaluated content and their activity outside Facebook, Facebook decided to remove profiles, fan page, and groups affiliated with these individuals. This indicates that Facebook is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.
Jones and his media outlet InfoWars had already been banned from Facebook in August 2018. But the Instagram account was not banned. As Instagram is also owned by Facebook, now Facebook decided to remove account also from Instagram. Jones has continuously promoted fringe conspiracy theories. Not only that his followers even stalked and harassed families of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Other people banned today include fringe right-wing media personalities Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Paul Nehlen. Watson is is an editor at Infowars and associate of Jones. Louis Farrakhan is an anti-semitic and leader of the Nation of Islam. Milo Yiannopoulos is a far-right provocateur who was also banned from twitter.
“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” Facebook said in a statement.
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