Facebook is finally banning white supremacy that goes by other names

Motherboard first reported that the decision came out of a conversation on platform moderation out of Facebooks Content Standards Forum yesterday and will go into effect next week. Under the new rules, detailed in a Facebook Newsroom post, the company will direct users who search for content related to white supremacy to Life After Hate, an organization that helps individuals leave violent far-right groups.

… 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 organized hate groups. Our own review of hate figures and organizations as defined by our Dangerous Individuals & Organizations policy further revealed the overlap between white nationalism and separatism and white supremacy.

For hate groups, hiding behind the guise of a slightly more benign term like white nationalism is a very useful way to obscure the fact that many of these superficially disparate ideologies have nearly total ideological overlap.

That misguided policy failed to see that white nationalism, white pride and white separatism are guises for and generally synonymous with the ideals set forth by white supremacy, a dangerous form of race-motivated radicalism that inspires hate-based violence.

Six months ago, Facebook indicated that it would review its policy on white nationalism and white separatism after speaking with civil rights groups that decried the company’s stance toward forms of white supremacy on its platform.

Still, it wasn’t very long ago that a simple search of a ubiquitous white supremacist term like “1488” would steer Facebook users toward a wealth of memes, posts and groups promoting violence against Jews and the black community, normalizing race-based hate in the process.

Original article