Facebook bans far-right Britain First group for inciting hatred against minorities

Facebook has decided to unfriend the unfriendly.

The company removed pages belonging to far-right U.K. group Britain First for repeatedly posting "content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups," Facebook explained in a blog post on Wednesday. The social media site said the group had ignored a final written warning asking it to stop sharing content that violates Facebook's hate speech community standards. The group's leaders, who were jailed last week after being convicted of religiously aggravated harassment, have also been banned from the site, BBC reports.

The Britain First page had more than two million followers. Its posts, which included photos with captions that read "Islamophobic and Proud" and compared Muslim immigrants to animals, were shared hundreds of thousands of times. Facebook will not allow a replacement page to be created, BBC says.

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British Prime Minister Theresa May and London Mayor Sadiq Khan expressed support for Facebook's decision. "Britain First is a vile and hate-fueled group," said Khan in a statement. Britain First found itself in the spotlight last November when President Trump retweeted several of its anti-Muslim videos.