Facebook is coming under renewed pressure to ban the British National Party from its site, with campaign groups and MPs claiming the content of BNP pages clearly breaches the site's terms and conditions.
More than 1,000 people have joined a new Facebook group demanding that the BNP is barred from the site. A separate offline petition initiated by the campaign group Unite Against Facism has collected 450 signatures including MPs Harry Cohen, Fiona Mactaggart, Stephen Pound and London MEP Claude Moraes.
United Against Facism said that until now, parents had been unaware that Facebook has been used by the BNP and that content on the BNP's profile pages - which detail the party's policies on immigration, law and order and foreign aid - breach the social networking website's own terms of use for the site.
An illustration on a BNP Facebook group includes an image of the word Islam as an acronym for intolerance, slaughter, looting, arson and molestation of women.
Facebook's terms of use state that users agree not to upload, post or share content that the site deems "harmful, threatening, unlawful ... inflammatory ... hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable".
UAF joint general secretary, Denis Fernando, told MediaGuardian.co.uk that the BNP is using Facebook to try and pitch itself as a political party while "promoting, intimidating and recruiting" through the site.
"My question to Facebook is: why have you not acted on this clear contravention of your own terms and conditions? Especially when eight companies have withdrawn their advertising," he said. "It is damaging to the Facebook brand and its revenue stream, because it should not allow anyone to breach the most fundamental terms of a site - causing offence and inciting ethnic attacks."
The five main BNP groups on the site count 377 members between them, though members often join multiple groups and the site also allows users to create hidden groups.
Several major advertisers pulled their campaigns from the site last week after it was revealed that their ads were appearing on the BNP's group pages and alongside other content that breaches typical in-house advertising policies. Facebook has since introduced an option that allows advertisers to opt out of the group section of the site, but also insisted that the vast majority of content on the site is brand-safe.
Facebook and the BNP had failed to comment by the time of publication.
Media Guardian
August 10, 2007
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