Facebook on Thursday designated several extremist figures as “dangerous” — including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer — and permanently banned them.
The social media giant said it removed the accounts, fan pages and groups affiliated with the high-profile personalities after it re-evaluated their content or re-examined their activities outside Facebook, the Washington Post reported.
“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” Facebook said in a statement.
“The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” it added.
Jones and InfoWars also had been banned from Facebook in August 2018, but had maintained a presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
On Thursday, Jones and his media outlet will also be barred from Instagram, where he and other extremists and alt-right stars have spread conspiracy theories, misinformation and extremist thought.
Jones recently hosted Gavin McInnes, leader of the Proud Boys, which the company designated as a hate figure in December.
Yiannopoulos praised McInnes publicly this year, and Loomer appeared with him at a rally.
Others who have been banned include YouTube personality and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson and white supremacist Paul Nehlen, who ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018.
A Facebook rep told CNN Business that the company goes through a lengthy process and takes several factors into consideration before deeming a person to be “dangerous.”
Such factors include whether the person or organization has ever called for violence against people based on race, ethnicity or national origin; whether the person has been identified with a hateful ideology; whether they use hate speech in their social media profiles; and whether they have had pages or groups removed from Facebook for violating hate speech rules.
Facebook has been wary of offending conservatives, who have accused the company of unfairly censoring their speech.
Thursday’s announcement is likely to be welcomed by civil rights activists who have long maintained that these people promote violent and hateful views and that social media companies should not allow their platforms to become a vehicle for spreading them.
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