Facebook bans far-right group Britain First

Social media platform Facebook has banned the page of far-right group Britain First and deleted the profiles of its leader, Paul Golding, and deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

Britain First, whose official Facebook page amassed more than 2 million likes before its removal, was reportedly shut down for “repeatedly violating community guidelines, such as sharing videos designed to incite hatred against Muslims”, the Daily Telegraph writes.

Facebook said in a statement that it had sent repeated warnings to the group, ordering them to remove any hate speech and Islamaphobic content, but that these had been ignored.

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“Content posted on the Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of party leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen has repeatedly broken our Community Standards,” the company said in a statement. “We recently gave the administrators of the Pages a written final warning, and they have continued to post content that violates our Community Standards. As a result, in accordance with our policies, we have now removed the official Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of the two leaders with immediate effect.”

A number of offences were singled out as the root cause of the ban, Business Insider writes, including “a photo of Fransen and Golding tagged ‘Islamaphobic and Proud’, a post caption that compares Muslim immigrants with animals, and several videos that deliberately incite hateful comments against Muslims”.

The group, which was banned from Twitter following the introduction of new hate speech guidelines last year, gained international notoriety in November 2017 when US President Donald Trump retweeted three anti-Islamic videos originally posted by Fransen.

Last week, Golding, 36, and Fransen, 32, were found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.