Facebook Has Announced A Crackdown On White Nationalism. But Will It Work?
People searching for hate speech will be redirected to a website that assists those looking to leave extremist groups.
For many years, a ruling share of consumers have gotten their news from Facebook. But, rather than accept the manner in which their site is actually used, moderators at Facebook have long resisted the responsibility of acting like a fully fledged media organisation.
After all, it took Facebook a long time to crack down on the fake news sites that were being shared by its users — a barrage of fictional, often disturbing stories designed to cement conspiracy theories and sway the American election. And it’s taken the social media titan even longer to respond to charges that extremists — from white nationalists to neo-Nazis — are using it in order to recruit new users, and spread their worldview.
Facebook expands its ban on hate speech to include white nationalism and white separatism. https://t.co/S12B1RW0oe
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 27, 2019
However, following the Christchurch shooting, committed by an alleged white supremacist and livestreamed on Facebook, it seems like Mark Zuckerberg and his team have been left with no recourse but to commit to some radical changes to the way their site works. And, in a statement released today, Facebook moderators have announced their plans to do that — kind of.
The statement, titled Standing Against Hate, outlines Facebook’s new supposedly harsh stance on white nationalism. Admitting that they once considered nationalism and separatism a sub-category of pride and patriotism, Facebook’s key staff now accept that “white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups”.
Nonetheless, it’s not clear how Facebook actually plan to enforce that ban. The statement specifically outlines that “people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage”, and moderators have offered no explanation as to how they will stop neo-Nazis and nationalists from simply refocusing their toxic worldview into a series of dog whistles concerning the sanctity of white, European culture.
Slightly more clear is the site’s new emphasis on machine learning, which will be used to find and eradicate hate speech from social media platforms faster. Apparently. Of course, anyone who has reported hatespeech on Facebook themselves will know that automated processes have considerable loopholes and are notoriously slow.
Interesting that it took a "civil rights backlash" for Facebook to ban white nationalism. Most people just kinda know that Nazis are bad.
— TJ Betts (@Disciple13) March 27, 2019
Finally, Facebook will divert users explicitly looking for white nationalist content towards Life After Hate, a charity and advocacy group that assists those looking to move out of extremist circles.
It’s easy to applaud such action as decisive — a case of a social media giant sorting a long overdue issue. But exactly what these new measures will do — if anything — remains to be seen. After all, no social media site has managed to sort their Nazi problem yet.
Lead image: Wikimedia Commons.