Facebook bans Britain First and its leaders

Facebook has banned Britain First from its platform, saying the far-right group has “repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups”.

Britain First’s Facebook page, which had more than 2m likes, and the pages of the two leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, have been banned from the social network.

“We are an open platform for all ideas and political speech goes to the heart of free expression,” Facebook said in a statement. “But political views can and should be expressed without hate. People can express robust and controversial opinions without needing to denigrate others on the basis of who they are.”

“We have community standards that clearly state this sort of speech is not acceptable on Facebook and, when we become aware of it, we remove it as quickly as we can,” the company added. “Political parties, like individuals and all other organisations on Facebook, must abide by these standards and where a page or person repeatedly breaks our community standards we remove them.” The group will also not be allowed to set up any further pages in future.

Source: theguardian