Several far-right personalities have just been permanently booted from Facebook.
The social media platform on Thursday said it had banned several "dangerous" extremist figures, including far-right figures Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Paul Joseph Watson, in addition to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, CNN reports. Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018, was banned as well.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars was also hit with a permanent ban that applies to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Jones and Infowars had previously been banned from Facebook last year. Thursday's ban not only applies to Jones and Infowars itself but also prevents any Infowars content from being posted by anyone on Facebook or Instagram, The Atlantic reports.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Yiannopoulos had previously been banned from Twitter after targeting Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones with racist attacks, while Loomer received a ban for an attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that Twitter said violated its hate speech policies.
In a statement, Facebook said on Thursday that it has an "extensive" process for evaluating violators of its policies that ban "individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology," and that this is what led them to remove these accounts.
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check lawSpeed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestoneSpeed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two yearsSpeed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on XSpeed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellitesSpeed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodesSpeed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 yearsSpeed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
