Facebook announces new policy to ban white nationalist content

Facebook said on Wednesday that it would ban white nationalist content from its platforms, a significant policy change that bows to long-standing demands from civil rights groups who said the tech giant was failing to confront the powerful reach of white extremism on social media.

The threat posed by white nationalism on Facebook was violently underlined this month when a racist gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand, using the platform to post live video of the attack. Facebook removed the video and the gunman’s account on Facebook and Instagram, but the footage was widely shared on YouTube, Twitter and Reddit.