Facebook ‘Reviewing’ Britain First’s Page After Twitter Bans Group’s Leaders

Britain First could be stripped of its Facebook page, the company has suggested.

The far-right group has almost 1.5 million Facebook likes and uses its page to distribute its anti-Muslim message.

Twitter yesterday suspended the accounts of Paul Golding, Britain First’s leader, and Jayda Fransen, its deputy leader as part of a crackdown on “hateful conduct”.

Simon Milner, Facebook’s director public policy, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his platform could follow suit.

“With Britain First, up until recently they were a registered political party that had people running in elections in the UK, so they were deemed by the authorities to be legitimate in that respect,” he said.

“However there are clearly issues with their Facebook page. There have been a number of pieces of content taken down. We are obviously reviewing it.”

But Milner added Facebook was “very cautious about political speech” when it came to banning pages.

The executive was responding to the committee’s Labour chair, Yvette Cooper, who asked if the reason Britain First was still allowed to operate on the platform was because Facebook had “lower standards” than Twitter.

Britain First group which gained prominence last month after US President Donald Trump re-tweeted three unverified, anti-Muslim videos posted by Fransen.

It caused a split in the UK-US relationship, with Theresa May telling Trump he was “wrong” to have supported Britain First’s attempt to “divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tension”.