Jeg har lige hørt et indslag om Kina i Datolinjen på Radio24syv. Det kommunistiske regime havde lukket blogs med millioner af følgere, fordi partiet ville have bedre styr på den offentlige debat.

Meget apropos så bekendtgjorde Facebook onsdag, at de på opfordring fra ‘civil rights groups’ og ‘academics who are experts in race relations’, fremover vil slette – ikke bare alt relateret til ‘white supremacy’, men mere overordnet ‘praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism’. På samme måde kunne segmentet sikkert argumentere for, at man ikke meningsfyldt kan adskille ‘hvid nationalisme’ med færdrelandskærlige vesterlændinge endsige demokratiske nationalkonservative. En velsmurt glidebane mod kinesiske tilstande.

Skulle nogle alligevel finde på at søge efter forbudte termer, såsom gruppen ‘It’s okay to be white’, så sendes man videre til exitgruppen ‘Life After Hate’. Bemærk, at de nye retningslinjer retter sig mere mod stemninger og fænomener end konkrete grupperinger. Forvent ikke at venstreradikale grupperinger også censureres, ja, der er nok større chance for at de bliver lønnede ekstremisme-rådgivere for tech-giganterne.

Flere detaljer i Washington Post – Facebook says it will now block white-nationalist, white-separatist posts.

“Facebook said Wednesday that it will begin banning posts, photos and other content that reference white nationalism and white separatism, revising its rules in response to criticism that a loophole had allowed racism to thrive on its platform.

Previously, Facebook had prohibited users from sharing messages that glorified white supremacy — a rhetorical discrepancy in the eyes of civil rights advocates who argued that white nationalism, supremacy and separatism are indistinguishable and that the policy undermined the tech giant’s stepped-up efforts to combat hate speech online.

Facebook now agrees with that analysis. In a blog post announcing the ban on ‘praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism,’ the company said, ‘It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services.’The new policy also applies to Instagram.

… While Facebook long had banned white supremacy, the company said in its blog post Wednesday that it ‘didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity.’

But conversations over the past three months with civil rights groups and academics led Facebook to rethink its practices, executives wrote. As part of the dialogue, the company reviewed a list of figures and organizations and found overlap between white nationalism, separatism and supremacy.

Civil rights groups applauded the move. ‘There is no defensible distinction that can be drawn between white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism in society today,’ Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Wednesday in a statement.

The organization had pushed Facebook for months to change its policies, pointing to pages such as ‘It’s okay to be white,’ which has more than 18,000 followers and has regularly defended white nationalism. Another, called ‘American White History Month 2,” often posted white-supremacist memes, according to the Lawyers’ Committee.”