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Facebook Bars Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan and Others From Its Services – The New York Times


The company has stressed in the past that it continuously reviews its content policies and the ways they work — or the ways they do not work — with the way people use Facebook.

Facebook’s policy team discussed how some accounts spread dangerous content but stopped short of encouraging violence or being directly affiliated with hate groups. They also wanted to find a way to remove the accounts or pages of a “dangerous individual” without blocking others from discussing what that person was saying, the people said. So in recent months, the social network updated its policies to navigate that middle ground, they said.

Facebook then found instances of extremism by Mr. Jones and others that pushed the company to take action against them. For example, Mr. Jones last year hosted an Infowars show featuring Gavin McInnes, a far-right political commentator whom Facebook had designated as a hate figure. Mr. Yiannopoulos had also signaled praise for Mr. McInnes earlier this year.

Social media companies have banned users affiliated with ISIS and other foreign extremist groups for years. But the fear of angering Republican lawmakers, or provoking an unwanted censorship debate, have made executives at these companies tread more carefully when it comes to domestic far-right extremists.

“I’m sure they’re going to make a slippery-slope argument here,” said Joan Donovan, the director of Harvard’s Technology and Social Change Research Project, who studies online extremism. “But if this kind of removal of services is because these people are in fact using their accounts to violate terms of service, or organize networked harassment, then it’s not really about conservative speech or any form of speech.”

Many of the users barred by Facebook remain active on YouTube and other social platforms. Mr. Watson maintains an active channel on YouTube, where he has 1.6 million subscribers. Mr. Jones, who was kicked off YouTube last year, has made guest appearances on the channels of other popular users since his ban, including the podcast host Joe Rogan and Logan Paul, a YouTube creator with 19 million subscribers.

A YouTube spokeswoman declined to comment.

Tech companies’ crackdowns do not just affect the reputations of these extremist figures. They also affect their earnings, by cutting them off from large audiences who support them financially. Mr. Yiannopoulos, who was banned by Venmo and PayPal last year after using the services to harass a Jewish journalist, is reportedly in debt, and Mr. Jones — who claimed that earlier bans would strengthen him by calling attention to his cause — has seen traffic to his web properties fall sharply.

On Wednesday, a day before his latest thwarting, Mr. Jones sent an email newsletter to his fans, thanking them for “supporting the infowar” and advertising discounted dietary supplements and water filtration systems. The email pointed to an Instagram page that, as of Thursday afternoon, no longer exists.



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