"Today we’re announcing a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram, which we’ll start enforcing next week. It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services", the press release read.
The US-based firm stressed it had always prohibited hateful treatment based on race, ethnicity or religion, but did not apply this rationale to white nationalism and separatism "because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism – things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity."
"But over the past three months our conversations with members of civil society and academics… have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups", the social network argued.
READ MORE: Facebook Takes Down Iranian Media Pages in Continued War on Alternative News
The press release comes a day after Facebook stated that the social network had removed over 2,600 pages, groups and accounts related to Iran, the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Russia for misleading themselves and fooling users about their activities.
