Facebook has taken down almost 200 social media accounts connected to white supremacy organizations that were planning to motivate members to take part in demonstrations over killings by police of black people - sometimes with weapons, company management on Friday disclosed.
The Facebook and Instagram accounts were linked to the American Guard and Proud Boys, two hate organizations that were already barred on the social media platforms.
Company officials have already been keeping a close eye on the accounts in preparation to deleting them when they saw comments trying to take advantage of the ongoing unrest triggered by George Floyd 's killing by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Facebook's head of counter-terrorism and dangerous groups policy Brian Fishman said that they saw these groups were planning to "rally supporters and members to physically participate in the protests and in some cases were preparing to go with weapons," based on a report by James Hockaday of Metro.
In defense of the move, Facebook disclosed that the deleted protester organizations were calling for violence in the face of ongoing riots, which is said to be infringing on their policies.
The social media giant also said that all Chinese and Russian government-run media platforms will soon be labeled on users' feed. This means that China's Xinhua News, Russia's Sputnik, and Iran's Press TV will soon have labels as state-controlled media. It was also reported that all ads from these government-media will soon be banned once they target American users on Facebook.
Of course, this action by Facebook did not sit well with the governments mentioned. The countries even said that the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech company should also concentrate on United States President Donald Trump's controversial claims than picking up on them.
The company pointed out that it will continue to take down new accounts, pages or groups or accounts created by users who are attempting to find a way around the ban. Earlier, Facebook bared the deletion of a handful of other social media accounts created by white supremacists who have been posing on Twitter as advocates of the far-left antifa organization.
According to Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang, as reported by Jamie P. of Tech Times, they hope that Facebook "can put aside the ideological bias and hold an open and accepting attitude towards each country's media role."
Aside from white supremacist groups, Facebook also disclosed they are also monitoring bogus accounts posing as popular personalities, political figures, and other medical organizations in the face of a global health crisis.
