According to a document recently supplied to Breitbart News by one of Facebook’s employees, it was revealed that the social media giant is monitoring offline behavior of its users to filter them as a ‘hate agent.’
The document detailing the information on Facebook’s policies for categorizing someone as a hate agent is titled ‘Hate Agent Policy Review.’
Here are a few criterion considered by Facebook upon monitoring offline and online behavior to determine if someone’s a ‘hate agent’ or not:
- Praising, interviewing, or appearing together at an event with a wrong individual (“wrong individual” in this case, is subjective to Facebook’s definition.)
- Self-identifying or advocating for a hate group such as the Islamic critic Tommy Robinson (example cited by Facebook).
- Having tattoos of hate symbols or slogans. While Facebook did not specifically mention which symbols constitute hatred, it is commonly believed in the media that a cartoon frog or the ‘OK’ sign may be considered hate symbols.
- Possessing “hate paraphernalia,” which isn’t clearly defined by Facebook.
- For making statements in private which are later made public. By now, it must be evident that Facebook holds a huge amount of data, both offline and online on someone.
- Speaking neutrally about events, individuals or more that are considered ‘hateful’ by Facebook.
While the above pointers helped Facebook identify ‘hate agents,’ here is a collection of criteria that the tech giant uses to determine if someone had indulged in ‘hate speech.’
If an individual makes either public or private statements that use hate speech or slurs of Tier 1,2 or 3:
1. 3 such instances in a statement or appearance = signal
2. 5 such instances in multiple statements or appearances in the span of a month = signal
The above-mentioned factors are a few among the many that the tech giant considers before labeling someone as a ‘hate agent’ and banning them.
It is not uncommon to know that Facebook often follows controversial policies and practices across its platform – be it banning conservatives on the platform or the rampant data scandals, Facebook never fails to surprise us.
So after monitoring people, if Facebook decides to put someone under the category of ‘hate agent,’ it then proceeds to ban them altogether from using the social network. A few public personalities to previously feature on the list and currently banned from using Facebook include Paul Joseph Watson, Candace Owens, Brigitte Gabriel, Carl Benjamin and more.
