Facebook on Wednesday banned praise, support and representation of
white nationalism and white separatism, a move that drew qualified
approval from New Zealand, where a massacre of 50 people in mosques was
live streamed earlier in March .
Civil rights groups have said social media giants have failed to
confront
extremism and that was under the spotlight in March after a
suspected white supremacist broadcast live footage of his attacks in
Christchurch, New Zealand.
Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet’s YouTube have been under pressure to
remove white supremacist and neo-Nazi content from their platforms,
along with fake news and other types of abusive posts.
In response, Facebook has beefed-up its content monitoring teams and
taken down event pages that were used to promote and organise rallies by
white supremacist groups.
New
Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has called for social media
platforms to be accountable for what users post, said material covered
by the measures should arguably have already been banned under
Facebook’s hate-speech rules.
“Having said that, I’m pleased to see that they are including it, and
that they have taken that step, but I still think that there is a
conversation to be had with the international community about whether or
not enough has been done,” she told a media conference in Christchurch
on Thursday.
“There are lessons to be learnt here in Christchurch and we don’t want anyone to have to learn those lesson over again.”
The policy will be enforced next week, Facebook said in a blog, and will apply to both its core Facebook app and Instagram.
Facebook has long banned white supremacy under its rules on “hateful”
content, but did not previously consider white nationalist or
separatist content to be explicitly racist.
Tech publication Motherboard, which first reported the policy change
on Wednesday, revealed that the company was maintaining the distinction
in 2018 after an investigation into its content moderation policies.
Civil rights groups say there is no distinction between the ideologies.
‘People’s identity’
Facebook said it had initially been wary of infringing on broader
concepts of nationalism and separatism, which it said are “an important
part of people’s identity”.
“But 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,”
it said.
“Going forward, while people will still be able to demonstrate pride
in their ethnic heritage, 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.
Representative Bennie Thompson, the chair of the US House committee
on homeland security, welcomed the new approach but lamented that
Facebook had not made the change sooner.
“This should have happened long ago,” Thompson said. “For too long,
Facebook has allowed hate speech — and the violence that it can inspire —
to propagate on its platform. Since billions use its service, we must
demand more from them.”
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