Facebook Boots Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Other Haters

Facebook today permanently banned several extremist figures, including Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Louis Farrakhan, for violating its prohibition on dangerous individuals and organizations.

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

Facebook did not say what particular incidents that led to the bans. "Factors for the removal included engaging in acts of hate or violence; calling for or carrying out acts of violence rooted in racial or ethnic prejudice; describing themselves as the follower of a hateful ideology; or using hate speech or slurs in their profiles," The Verge reports.

Those who were banned have a long history of hateful speech. Jones, who runs the Infowars website, is a far-right conspiracy theorist who often engages in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. He has also embraced but had to backtrack from assertions that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged for political purposes and that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex-trafficking ring run from a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.

He and Infowars had been banned from Facebook last August but as of today, he and the site are also banned from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, CNN reports.

Yiannopoulos, who is gay, is a right-wing provocateur who is often transphobic, among other things. He was banned from Twitter in 2016 after encouraging his followers to disparage African-American actress Leslie Jones, and many of them used racist language to do so. He also "joked" about violence against journalists after last year's shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., and said he hoped the perpetrator was transgender. He had been temporarily banned from Facebook previously.

Others banned as of today are Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who is known for anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks; Laura Loomer, a far-right, anti-Muslim activist; Paul Joseph Watson, a radio host, writer, and conspiracy theorist who sometimes works with Jones; and Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist and anti-Semite who ran unsuccessfully in Republican primaries for a congressional seat from Wisconsin in 2016 and 2018.

Facebook and Instagram users will still be able to create posts praising these people and their organizations, company officials said. However, it "will remove groups, pages and accounts created to represent the banned individuals when it knows the individual is participating in the effort," according to CNN.

Facebook has "been wary of offending conservatives, who have become vocal about allegations that the company unfairly censors their speech," The Washington Post notes. But the company "has recently signaled that it is willing to take a stronger stance against white nationalism and white supremacy in particular," the paper reports.

Some media watchdogs and civil rights activists said Facebook's action was necessary given the recent shootings at a synagogue in California and mosques in New Zealand -- attacks that were livestreamed on the platform.

"The reality is, people are getting killed. There are mass shootings and mass murders that are clearly being connected to ideas like white genocide, which are fueling radicalization," Angelo Carusone, president of watchdog group Media Matters for America, told the Post. "The conditions have changed, when you have these massive catalyzing moments that are connected to real-life consequences, it puts pressure on Facebook and others to look in the mirror."