Controversial influencer Andrew Tate banned from Facebook and Instagram

Andrew Tate, the controversial social media influencer and self-help guru has been banned on all Meta platforms as of Friday as confirmed by The Guardian. At the time of his ban from Meta's platforms, Tate had amassed over 4.7 million followers on Instagram.

Bans from Facebook and Instagram mean the former kickboxer turned multimillionaire influencer is now de-platformed from the big three social media platforms. He was banned from Twitter in 2016 after stating women should "bear responsibility" for being sexually assaulted. Meta banned Tate for violating its policies on “dangerous organizations and individuals," The Guardian confirmed.

Tate's videos — which are cartoonishly misogynistic —amassed a large amount of attention this summer due to their controversial and over-the-top nature, and their ubiquity. Tate's questionable source of income appears to involve inducing customers at his "Hustler's University" business to create social media accounts, clipping short vignettes from Tate's podcast and interview appearances, and dispersing them to as many people as possible.

What appeared to have been Tate's official Tiktok account has been banned for quite some time now, but his various fan accounts on TikTok have hundreds of thousands of followers. The #andrewtate hashtag alone has 13.4 billion views on Tiktok. A spokesperson with Tiktok told The Guardian that the platform has been "removing violative videos and accounts for weeks and welcome[s] the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual."

In a statement to The Guardian, Tate told the outlet that most of his videos are parody, and that "Internet sensationalism has purported the idea that I'm anti-women when nothing could be further from the truth." Tate appeared with popular Twitch streamer Adin Ross and spoke about the claims further. He stated that everything said about him was a false narrative created by people who dislike him.

"What they've done is found all the little clips across six years of content, a total of three or four minutes, and are trying to make it look like I'm out there trying to hate on women when I'm the one out here donating to women trying to prove that my influence has an effect and that I need to be very very careful with it," Tate said on Ross' stream. "It's a truly false narrative." Tate has so far been unapologetic about the many controversial statements that he claims are being used to construct this supposedly false narrative.

The UK advocacy group Hope Not Hate told the BBC that Tate is a “dangerous misogynist” and called on more social media companies to deplatform him. Joe Mulhall, director of research at the group, told the BBC that "Mr. Tate poses a genuine threat to young men, radicalizing them towards extremism misogyny, racism and homophobia."