Facebook has removed pages of the heavy-metal bands SoldierSS of Evil, Whitelaw, and Frangar for violating the platforms hate speech policies.
The ban follows a new Al Jazeera investigation that identified 120 Facebook pages with a total of over 800,000 likes of mostly heavy-metal bands and record labels with direct ties to white supremacist ideology. Al Jazeera flagged five of these pages to Facebook for breaking the platforms hate speech rules by displaying white supremacist ideology, but two are still under review.
According to Al Jazeera, the majority of the pages have been online for years, actively posting updates and advertising their merchandise, sometimes using white supremacist imagery. One of the bands whose infringing page is still up is M8l8th, a black metal music act from Ukraine whose full name means Hitlers Hammer.
The bands founder has ties to far-right nationalist movements and the band uses Nazi propaganda in its songs, such as parts of a speech by Joseph Goebbels and the official anthem of the Nazi party, Horst Wessel-Lied.
[Read: Facebook issues $100K challenge to build an AI that can identify hateful memes]
Yarno Ritzen, the journalist who led Al Jazeeras investigation, told TNW that they only flagged five of the pages, but Facebook should be aware of all 120 as most examples were simply found through Related pages.
So it shouldnt be too hard for Facebook to identify the majority of these pages by going down its own rabbit hole, Ritzen wrote in reply to TNW.
The bigger bands on the list are smarter about obscuring their obvious ties with racist ideologies like trying to blur some of the content that goes against Facebooks policies, such as swastikas, SS logos, etc. but others remain flagrantly racist. SoldierSS of Evils lyrical themes are, for example, commonly categorized as National Socialism, Antisemitism, so TNW asked Facebook why it hadnt removed the pages years earlier.
Weve yet to receive a reply, but Ritzen points out that Facebook frequently talks up its algorithm and moderators for catching a lot of hateful content but this doesnt appear to be as effective as the company would like to believe, given that some of these pages have been online for a decade.
In a statement to Al Jazeeras inquiries, a Facebook spokesperson said that hate speech is not allowed on the platform including white supremacist content and that the company would continue to improve its technologies and policies to remove hate from its platform.
Unfortunately zero tolerance doesnt mean zero incidents. We have removed three of these Pages for breaking our rules and are reviewing the remaining two against our policies, the spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeeras revelation comes just a week after more than 500 advertisers announcing they were boycotting Facebook for not responding sufficiently to hate speech on its platform.
That didnt seem to phase Mark Zuckerberg though. In an internal Facebook meeting, the company CEO said my guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.
While boycotting companies include some major names such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Target, they are not the biggest spenders on the platform. Only three out of the top 25 ad spenders joined the boycott, which might explain Zuckerbergs bravado response.
Were not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue, Zuckerberg said in the internal meeting, according to The Information.
While COO Sheryl Sandberg says the companystands firmly against hate and Facebooks anti-hate speech measures are being improved, Zuckerbergs comments beg the question as to how seriously the company takes the issue if it doesnt affect its bottom line.
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Facebook removes 3 white supremacist band pages leaves 117 others - The Next Web