Facebook announced Thursday afternoon that it had banned some high-profile conservative media personalities from all social media platforms the company owns.
Louis Farrakhan, the leader of Nation of Islam, an African American political and religious movement, InfoWars founder Alex Jones and media personalities Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson have all been banned.
Jones and his media outlet InfoWars had previously been banned from Facebook (FB) in August 2018, but had maintained a presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. On Thursday Facebook said that Jones and InfoWars will be barred from Instagram as well.
“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” Facebook said in a statement to Fox News.
Some of the individuals who fell under Facebook’s rules against « dangerous » individuals and organizations, responded to the ban on their accounts in the brief period between when Facebook announced the ban and when Facebook scrubbed the accounts. Loomer denied in an Instagram post that she ever violated the company’s terms of service and asked people to follow her on a different platform, adding, « Looks like you guys will probably never hear from me again.
