Facebook Bans “Britain First” Pages For Promoting Hate Speeches

These days, the social media is a great avenue to gain popularity, and one of the tactics that some people employ is to use hate speeches without caring about the effect that their actions have on others. Most famous are the jihadist groups which do as much as to incite anything anti-Islam. However, a reverse group known as Britain First, an anti-Islam group has been pulled down by Facebook for violating community standards.

The anti-Islam group’s leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen were found guilty of religious harassment earlier this month and were jailed afterward.

With over 2,000,000 likes and followings on their Facebook page, the group ignored a warning from Facebook, asking them to take down every post that incites hatred against Muslims. Some of the notable posts included a caption “Islamophobic and Proud” with the group leaders’ photo; another caption compared Muslim immigrants with animals and a series of videos to indicate deep hate for Islam.

The group, according to Facebook has continuously violated social media standards against hate speeches. In fact, in December 2017, Twitter suspended their accounts for a similar offense after its law against social media abuse came into force.

London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has expressed displeasure at the movement. He said: “Britain First is a vile and hate-fuelled group. Their sick intentions to incite hatred within our society via social media are reprehensible, and Facebook’s decision to remove their content is welcome.”

It’s understandable that certain religions and tribes will not appeal to one’s emotions all the time; however, people can still do away with hate speeches or degenerating remarks towards what is unattractive to them. Political and religious issues are sensitive subjects that often stir controversies on social media; nevertheless, “people can express robust and controversial opinions without needing to denigrate others on the basis of who they are,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Over the past months, the social media company has been fighting against hate speeches against individuals, religion, race, gender and other characteristics. “Organisations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook.”

Given this, Facebook has banned the group from creating a replacement page, except, of course, they come up with mischievous plans to bypass Facebook’s strict measures, for instance, misspelling the group name to mislead the robot.