Facebook Suspends Lil B For “Hate Speech”

Chris McKay / Getty Images

Facebook Suspends Lil B For “Hate Speech”

Chris McKay / Getty Images

Lil B is under a temporary ban from Facebook after running afoul of the site’s controversial censorship methods. The social network confirms to Motherboard that it has suspended the rapper for 30 days for violating its hate speech policies. His account has gone silent since Oct. 4. According to a tweet from Lil B, he was suspended for “talking about white people.”

Facebook has already deleted the offending content, but some of his recent posts that were not removed address issues of racial inequality, such as the continuing economic legacy of slavery:

IM WITH THE WHITE FOLKS ALL DAY IN PIEDMONT CA!! WHERE DID THESE WHITE PEOPLE COME FROM WHAT WAS THEY STRUGGLE? PASSED DOWN SLAVE $? – Lil B

Another recent post about “harmless looking” white people “pushing passive violence” remains as well:

LETS TALK ABOUT HOW SECRETLY THESE HARMLESS LOOKING WHITE PEOPLE WITH TIGHT PANTS SUITS AND GLASSES ARE PUSHING PASSIVE VIOLENCE! – Lil B

Both of those messages also appeared word-for-word on Lil B’s Twitter account, so it’s reasonable to assume some of his other tweets from Oct. 2 are among the posts Facebook deemed offensive. Here is a selection of his tweets from the same day:

If you’re interested in continuing to follow Lil B’s commentary during his Facebook suspension, he’s still quite active on Twitter.

UPDATE: Lil B sent Motherboard the posts that got him suspended from Facebook. A screenshot with the header “We Removed Something You Posted” includes the text from these two messages:

Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja also explained the rationale behind the ban to Motherboard:

I think if you were to change “white” to something else, like “black people are the problem, they’re so violent” — if you just took a step back and replaced it with anything else, those are the type of things that our hate speech policies are intended to capture and they apply equally to all races. They are race-neutral.

However, Motherboard was ample to locate many posts on Facebook insinuating that “violence is acceptable in ‘black culture'” or plainly stating that “Islam is an inherently violent religion.” Budhraja said she’d have to see the specific posts in order to comment.

Finally, a statement from Lil B:

as i have lectured at some of the best institutions around the usa i felt that i was only starting a blunt but positive discussion with no hate intended. I respect facebook its policy’s and staff and would love to work together in the future on ways to combat hate as well as praise free speech and protect all people i love you thank you – Lil B

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