Facebook has removed around 200 social media accounts linked to racism groups that planned to encourage members to attend protests over police killings of black people.
There were also cases of insisting to accompany them with weapons. The company reported through officials on Friday.
Two hate groups ‘Proud Boys’ and ‘American Guard’, against the white supremacy were already banned on Social Media platforms. These 200 accounts on Facebook and Instagram are associated with these two hate groups. These accounts were being monitored by the officials.
They were prepared to remove those groups, as they saw posts attempting to exploit the ongoing protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Facebook’s director of counterterrorism and dangerous organizations policy, Brian Fishman said, “We saw that these groups were getting to rally supporters and members to physically go to the protests and in some cases, they were planning to go with weapons”.
The company said approximately 190 accounts were removed overall. However, the company did not disclose details of the account users, such as their specific plans for protests or their location in the U.S.
Earlier, both the Proud Boys and American Guard had been banned from Facebook. Because they have violated rules prohibiting hate speech. Facebook also said that it will continue to remove new pages, groups, or accounts created by users trying to avoid the ban.
Facebook announced earlier this week that they will remove a few other accounts created by white supremacists who had been posing on Twitter as members of the far-left Antifa movement.
