Facebook has purged its platform of pages touting the far-right Britain First group and its leaders, including Jayda Fransen, the anti-Islamic activist infamously retweeted by President Trump last year, citing repeating violations of its rules against hate speech. In a blog post published earlier today titled “Taking action against Britain First,” the company elaborated on its justification for banning the aforementioned accounts, saying that the trio “repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups.”

“Content posted on the Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of party leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen has repeatedly broken our Community Standards,” it said. Facebook says that the decision to implement bans was not taken lightly and that the moderators of the Britain First page, and Golding and Fransen, had received final written warnings about the content they were posting. As a result, in accordance with our policies, we have now removed the official Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of the two leaders with immediate effect.”

Britain First’s banned Facebook page boasted about 2 million social media followers before being abruptly removed Wednesday, having made the platform an important conduit with respect to propagating the group’s ultranationalist ideologies. “We do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the Pages from our service,” Facebook said of the removals. Funded in 2011 by former members of the British National Party, Britain First has repeatedly come under fire on both sides of the Atlantic for propagating anti-immigration and anti-Islamic sentiments, including notably in November after Mr. Trump retweeted several videos in posted on Twitter by Fransen, spurring condemnation from British politicians and prompting calls for the president to be banned from the U.K.

Twitter suspended the accounts of Britain First and its leaders in December, and Mr. Trump has since stated that he was unaware of their activities before repeatedly retweeting Mr. Fransen.
Facebook blocks Britain First, a far-right group that has been deregistered as a political party in the United Kingdom, because leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen have repeatedly violated its community standards.