Facebook determined the page violated community standards for hate speech, company spokesman Daniel Roberts said in an email. The page was removed Wednesday.
Edited by: TJVNews.com
Facebook has agreed to shutter the public page of a group the administration has identified as anti-Semitic, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday, according to an AP report.
Murphy, a Democrat, said in a joint statement with Attorney General Gurbir Grewal that the social media giant agreed to “take down the public page” of a group called Rise Up Ocean County, which is focused on development in the shore community.
“We appreciate that Facebook has now decided that this kind of hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform,” Murphy and Grewal said in the statement, as was reported by AP.
Facebook determined the page violated community standards for hate speech, company spokesman Daniel Roberts said in an email. The page was removed Wednesday, according to the AP report.
The development comes after Grewal’s office wrote in April to Facebook to make the social network aware of the page.
Among the posts on the group page, according to the attorney general, was a video in which the group predicted that a group of Orthodox rabbis would lead to the “colonization” of Lakewood, in Ocean County, the AP reported. Another comment on the site referenced the Holocaust and called for getting “rid of them like like Hitler did,” according to the attorney general.
AP reported that last year Facebook cracked down on what it called “dangerous individuals,” banning accounts it said violated its policy. The company has said it has always banned people or groups that proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence, regardless of political ideology, was was reported by AP.
For years, social media companies have been under pressure from civil rights groups and other activists to clamp down on hate speech on their services. After the deadly white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Google, Facebook and PayPal began banishing extremist groups and people who identified as or supported white supremacists.
Taking a leading and formidable role in having the anti-Semitic Facebook page taken down was the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In a public statement that was posted on Thursday, the SWU said, “After having Wiesenthal Center’s Eastern Director Michael Cohen spend countless days and hours beginning last January, working alongside local community partners in Lakewood, Toms River, Jackson and throughout Ocean County NJ, including Agudath Israel of America, local elected officials, the Governor and the Attorney General; the hate site “Rise Up Ocean County” was finally removed from Facebook yesterday. With a two pronged strategy of discrediting the site and making every attempt to have Facebook take its page down and off of its platform, success was finally had yesterday and a strong message was sent that we will be relentless and tireless in combating anti-Semitism and hate on social media platforms.
SWC would like to extend its appreciation to the Governor and Attorney General for their continued and commendable efforts in making sure to publicly call out Rise Up Ocean County as a hate site at every public opportunity.”
The Wiesenthal Center also said: “The coalition that worked long and hard toward this result was specifically effective due to the true diversity of Ocean County leaders working together against hate demonstrating how much stronger we are when standing together. United, we were able to work to have the Ocean County Freeholders pass a Wiesenthal Center drafted resolution specifically condemning the Holocaust distortion and anti-Semitic stereotypes constantly being presented and posted by the Rise Up Ocean County site and Facebook page. Together we worked collectively and diligently to ensure that Ocean County residents had their leadership make it clear that the sites’ activities were considered taboo and inciting hate and should be recognized as isolated from mainstream discussions on community issues.”
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