“After years of pressure to crack down on hate and bigotry, Facebook has banned Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and other extremists, saying they violated its ban on ‘dangerous individuals,'” the AP reports.
Right-wing personalities Paul Nehlen, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer were also kicked off the social media site, along with Jones’ site Infowars, which often posts conspiracy theories.
“The latest bans apply to both Facebook’s main service and to Instagram and extend to fan pages and other related accounts,” the AP reports. “Decried as censorship by several of those who got the ax, the move signals a renewed effort by the social media giant to remove people and groups promoting objectionable material such as hate, racism and anti-Semitism.”
The report adds: “Dipayan Ghosh, a former Facebook executive and an Internet policy expert at Harvard, said the ban isn’t as big a step as Facebook appears to be painting it — it’s just enforcing its existing policy.”
Ghosh is quoted saying: “There will always be more purveyors of hate speech that try to come on these platforms. Will advocates have to push year after year just to get (a handful of) individuals off? At this rate it seems likely. And this doesn’t address the problem of what happens at the margins.”
People need to remember Facebook is a private business. Therefore they can choose who they want on their website.
They certainly can TV person. But by picking and choosing they open themselves to all sorts of scrutiny and legitimate second guessing when said choices are made and scant reason is given or the motivations behind those reason are thinly veiled. I don’t much care for conspiracy theory bums like Jones or an anti Semite race hustler like Farrakhan but I’m also in favor of MORE free speech than less.