As part of a coordinated purge where many mainstream media sites were given the information in advance, Facebook has permanently banned the personal Facebook accounts and Instagram accounts of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson, independent journalist Laura Loomer, and political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos for violating its “dangerous individuals and organizations” policy.
Many mainstream media outlets were tipped off about the bans by Facebook and even published reports about the bans before some of the accounts were taken offline.
For example, here’s a tweet thread from The Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz showing that Loomer’s Instagram account was still live when The Atlantic published its post saying she had been banned from Instagram:
And The Verge updated its article on the bans shortly after it was published with the following text:
“Update, 2:21PM: Added additional context on why some accounts were banned and noted that some pages were still available.”
Watson also highlighted how many mainstream media outlets were tipped off before he was banned from Facebook and Instagram:
This suggests that the bans were a PR move by Facebook in order to get maximum exposure for their so-called purge of “dangerous individuals.”
