Facebook has removed nearly 200 social media accounts linked to white supremacy groups that planned to encourage members to attend protests over police killings of black people<\/p>\n
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Facebook has removed nearly 200 social media accounts linked to white supremacy groups that planned to encourage members to attend protests over police killings of black people \u2014 in some cases with weapons, company officials said Friday.<\/p>\n
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The accounts on Facebook and Instagram were tied to the Proud Boys and the American Guard, two hate groups already banned on the platforms. Officials were already monitoring the accounts in preparation for removing them when they saw posts attempting to exploit the ongoing protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw that these groups were planning to rally supporters and members to physically go to the protests and in some cases were preparing to go with weapons,” said Brian Fishman, Facebook’s director of counterterrorism and dangerous organizations policy.<\/p>\n
The company did not divulge details of the account users \u2014 such as their specific plans for protests or where in the U.S. they live. It said \u201capproximately\u201d 190 accounts were removed overall.<\/p>\n
Both the Proud Boys and American Guard had been banned from Facebook for violating rules prohibiting hate speech. Facebook said it will continue to remove new pages, groups or accounts created by users trying to circumvent the ban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook has removed nearly 200 social media accounts linked to white supremacy groups that planned to encourage members to attend protests over police killings of black people Facebook has removed nearly 200 social media accounts linked to white supremacy groups that planned to encourage members to attend protests over police killings of black people \u2014 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_108372464460192_245495985553329":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n