Facebook Ban Controversies

Submission 8,502

Part of a series on Facebook / Meta. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Facebook User Bans refer the suspensions of various controversial political figures and pages from the social networking platform Facebook.

Developments

Infowars Ban

In July 2018, Facebook suspended the personal account of InfoWars founder Alex Jones. The following month, four Infowars pages were banned from the platform for violating the site's "hate speech and bullying policies."

Tommy Robinson Ban

In late February 2019, the account of right-wing activist Tommy Robinson was suspended from the platform for posting "material that uses dehumanizing language" and "in ways that violate our policies around organized hate."

White Nationalism Ban

On March 27th, 2019, Facebook updated its policies to ban white nationalism and white separatism. Those who attempt to post about white nationalism and white separatism will be redirected to the website for the organization Life After Hate,^[5] "nonprofit founded by ex-white supremacists that is dedicated to getting people to leave hate groups." They said in a statement to Motherboard:^[1]

"We’ve had conversations with more than 20 members of civil society, academics, in some cases these were civil rights organizations, experts in race relations from around the world. We decided that the overlap between white nationalism, [white] separatism, and white supremacy is so extensive we really can’t make a meaningful distinction between them. And that’s because the language and the rhetoric that is used and the ideology that it represents overlaps to a degree that it is not a meaningful distinction."

United Kingdom Bans

On April 17th, 2019, Facebook banned the pages for several far-right United Kingdom-based pages, citing the company's policies against "dangerous individuals and organizations."^[2]

May 2019 Influencer Bans

On May 2nd, 2019, Facebook and Instagram banned several controversial political figures from the platforms, including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer. According to The Verge,^[4] Facebook^[2] cited its policies against "dangerous individuals and organizations" in reference to the ban, and released the following statement:

"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."

That day, BuzzFeed News^[3] published an article titled "Facebook And Instagram Are Banning Far-Right Influencers Like Alex Jones," which noted that the news sites Atlantic, The Verge, CNN and The Washington Post all ran similar articles about the ban on Thursday afternoon, with some appearing "before influencers like Yiannopoulos or Loomer actually lost their accounts."