Facebook’s South Africa problem: Just what exactly is ‘white nationalism’?

As part of a flurry of changes to alter public perception of Facebook, the organisation has decided it will start taking down posts that support white nationalism and white separatism, igniting a subterranean debate about whether this move and others constitute a genuine desire to change or a genuine desire to subvert criticism.

The change has happened in the wake of the terrorist attack, live-streamed on Facebook, on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed 50 people. But in fact, the discussion started a few months earlier. The alleged perpetrator in the New Zealand killing, Brenton Tarrant, was reportedly a member of a white supremacist group.

It also comes in the wake of an editorial published in the Washington Post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling for greater government regulation — a move that elicited a wide range of responses ranging from guarded support to outright cynicism.

On white supremacy, the change was in fact a response to leaked internal training documents for Facebook moderators which banned white supremacist content, but allowed white separatist and white nationalist content because the organisation believed that a general rule forbidding white nationalism and separatism would inadvertently ensnare other, legitimate movements like “black separatist groups, and the Zionist movement, and the Basque movement”.

Facebook public policy manager Ulrick Casseus said in an interview with Daily Maverick:

“We’ve always allowed people to advocate for nationalism and separatism because we wanted to provide people space to express themselves. But speaking with members of the civil rights community and academics we came to understand that white nationalism and white separatism operate differently to other types of nationalism, especially in the US and in Europe.”

From now on, people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, but “we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism”, Facebook said.

If you try a post or search for white nationalist or separatist content, you may be greeted with a pop-up directing you to a website for the organisation Life After Hate, founded by former extremists that provide education and support to people looking to leave hate groups. Facebook policies already ban posts endorsing white supremacy, and there is a general prohibition against spewing hate at people based on race, ethnicity and religion.

All of this constitutes a huge change for Facebook, which until recently regarded itself primarily as a platform, pure and simple, and not a content producer, and that its users were ultimately responsible for their own contributions. This approach, cynics have pointed out, meshed perfectly with Facebook’s business model which has for years been rooted in monetising content others create.

Yet such has been the backlash to this financially convenient self-imposed blindness that the organisation is now changing dramatically, which is appreciated by some while others argue it is “too little too late”.

Having decided to make the change, however, it is becoming apparent to the organisation how difficult it actually is to monitor and even to define when is needed, and the “white nationalism” issue constitutes a good example.

Casseus says Facebook concluded that white nationalism and white separatism “are tied to organised hate and they inherently hate ideologies which are different from other types of nationalism and separatism”.

After examining posts on the platform, the organisation discovered “we have people on our platform who consider themselves white separatists and white nationalists and they have committed a number of violent acts, engaged in hate speech, and associated with other hateful individuals”.

“They use their ideology to galvanise others to act in a hateful way,” Casseus said.

Where does this leave free speech? Casseus says Facebook wants to promote free speech as much as possible, but “but if it gets to a point where speech infringes on people safety or threatens somebody, we want to make sure that that content is not on the platform”.

He acknowledged the difficulty.

“Right now this is the first step, it’s not the last step. I say that because we understand that white nationalism and white separatism work differently across the globe.”

How would Facebook deal with an organisation such as AfriForum, for example, that would not consider itself to be a white separatist organisation, but certainly at least partially defends apartheid? Facebook does have a list of designated organisations, but Casseus says he is personally not familiar with AfriForum and would be seeking to learn more. DM