Facebook bans Alex Jones, others from Instagram and Facebook

Facebook has stepped up the enforcement of its own rules, announcing the Facebook and Instagram bans of a host of controversial public figures including Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, and others.

It has taken action against these figures and others because Facebook considers them "dangerous," per a definition in Facebook's Community Guidelines. It is banning the individuals and affiliated pages from both Facebook and Instagram.

“We've always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology," a Facebook spokesperson said. "The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today."

Following the actions of other tech platforms, Facebook banned Alex Jones and InfoWars pages from Facebook in August 2018. Today's ban affects Jones' and InfoWars' Instagram pages.

The ban is also affecting:

• Louis Farrakhan, a leader of the group Nation of Islam, who has routinely espoused anti-semitic views.

• Milo Yiannopoulos, who has engaged in targeted harassment campaigns.

• Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist and former GOP congressional candidate.

• Paul Joseph Watson, a British conspiracy theorist.

• Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur who engages in targeted harassment (including of Rep. Ilhan Omar).

Some of the account pages still remained live at the time of writing, but Facebook said it is in the midst of removing the pages from the platforms. However, since news of the ban hit before all of the accounts were taken down, Jones and Yiannopoulos took the opportunity to bash Facebook. Some critics on Twitter also called out Facebook for using the news of the bans as a PR opportunity — and for letting the PR upside undermine the effectiveness of the bans.

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Facebook said it evaluates pages and individuals as "dangerous" with an extensive process to determine whether they meet the criteria for this categorization. Some of the criteria include if they call for (or carry out) acts of violence against people in protected groups (like race or religion), if they self-identify as following a hateful ideology, and if they post content that violates hate speech policies. Facebook may also take action against vocal supporters of people designated as "dangerous," and remove events in which these people are participating.

While many Conservatives deride these actions as free speech violations, experts support deplatforming — or, the tactic of removing the social platforms of people who promote extremism — as a way to combat the spread of hate and hateful ideology online. The shrinking relevance of figures who have been deplatformed, like Milo Yiannopoulos, provides evidence that, in the often overwhelming fight against the rising tide of extremism online, deplatforming works.

UPDATE: May 2, 2019, 3:53 p.m. EDT This article was updated to include reactions to the ban.