NZ PM welcomes Facebook bans on white nationalism

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday that she welcomed Facebook Inc’s decision to ban praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism on its social media platforms.

“Arguably these categories should always fall within the community guidelines of hate speech, but nevertheless it’s positive the clarification has now been made in the wake of the attack in Christchurch,” she said at a press conference.

Facebook’s ban was a shift in policy after criticism by civil rights groups that it was failing to confront extremism.

Ardern said 59 countries will send diplomatic representatives to a national remembrance service on Friday.

Facebook Inc on Wednesday banned praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism, a move that drew qualified approval from New Zealand where a massacre of 50 people in mosques was live streamed earlier this month.

Civil rights groups have said social media giants have failed to confront extremism and that was under the spotlight this month after a suspected white supremacist broadcast live footage of his attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube have been under pressure to remove white supremacist and neo-Nazi content from their platforms, along with fake news and other types of abusive posts.

In response, Facebook has beefed up its content monitoring teams and taken down event pages that were used to promote and organize rallies by white supremacist groups.

The policy will be enforced next week, Facebook said in a blog here post, and will apply to both its core Facebook app and Instagram.

Facebook has long banned white supremacy under its rules on “hateful” content, but did not previously consider white nationalist or separatist content to be explicitly racist.

Tech publication Motherboard, which first reported the policy change on Wednesday, revealed that the company was maintaining the distinction last year after an investigation into its content moderation policies.

Civil rights groups say there is no distinction between the ideologies.

In a statement, Facebook said it had initially been wary of infringing on broader concepts of nationalism and separatism, which it said are “an important part of people’s identity.”

“But over the past three months our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups,” the company said.

“Going forward, while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.”

Facebook said it would also start connecting people who search for terms associated with white supremacy to an organization called Life After Hate, focused on helping people leave hate groups.

Life After Hate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.