Facebook Hesitates, Then Removes Islamic State Page for Violating Community Standards

The big social media services have been generally aggressive about purging ISIS content—if sometimes unable to keep up with the sheer volume of it. One example is the “Khilafah News” page on Facebook. The social media giant initially hesitated to take it down, but upon review, concluded that it does violate their community standards.

The Foreign Desk filed a complaint with Facebook about Khilafah News (whose name is a reference to the “caliphate,” i.e. the religiously-ordained kingdom supposedly established by ISIS) on Sunday.

TFD quoted Khilafah News describing itself as an outlet for “official material published by the Islamic State,” including news items, video clips, and official statements. The creation of this Facebook page was widely trumpeted on Twitter, using a special hashtag. It may be intended as a replacement for a large number of ISIS-linked channels purged by the secure chat site Telegram, which was indifferent toward the presence of Islamic State militants until after the Paris terror attacks.

The Foreign Desk reported a particular photo posted on Khilafah News, which they did not reproduce in their report. Facebook replied that they had reviewed the photo for “hate speech” but found it was not in violation of Facebook’s prohibition against such messages.

Facebook’s community standards define hate speech as “content that directly attacks people based on their race; ethnicity; national origin; religious affiliation; sexual orientation; sex, gender or gender identity; or serious disabilities or diseases.”

“Organizations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook,” the community standards page declares.

Upon further review, Facebook concluded the Khilafah News page did violate community standards, and they took it down Sunday night or Monday morning.

“We work aggressively to ensure that we do not have terrorists or terror groups using the site, and we also remove any content that praises or supports terrorism,” a Facebook representative confirmed to Breitbart News. “It should have been removed when it was first reported to us, but it has now been removed.”