Blackface photos banned from Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and its sister service Instagram will ban images of blackface and content that depicts Jewish people controlling the world as part of a global crackdown on harmful stereotypes.

The social media giant said it will remove all "implicit" hate speech used to "disparage, intimidate or exclude" people based on their race or religion, as well as more explicit attacks.

The ban, which comes into force later this month, will apply to "caricatures of black people" that make use of blackface, as well as content that describes Jewish people "controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government".

But the announcement caused an immediate furore in the Netherlands, where Facebook will remove all pictures of the controversial Christmas folk character Black Pete that show him in black make-up.

The company is still deciding how its new rules will apply to English Morris dancers who traditionally black their faces, which has been banned by Britain's biggest Morris organisation as a "hurtful" practice.

The ban came amid a sharp rise in dangerous coronavirus misinformation such as hoax cures and spurious health advice, with Facebook removing 7m pieces of content between April and June compared to just "hundreds of thousands" between January and March.

Executives also admitted that the company had failed to catch a huge amount of suicide and self-harm content due to the effect of the pandemic on its human moderation workforce, with just 911,000 instances removed compared to 1.4m at the start of the year.

Facebook said: "While our hate speech policies apply equally to all people, we recognise that statements about specific groups of people may pose unique harm because of the way they’ve historically been used to attack, intimidate or exclude.

"In this vein, we are strengthening our policies to go beyond dehumanising comparisons and also ban certain kinds of harmful stereotypes that have historically been used to attack, intimidate or exclude specific groups."

It said that blackface and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories were among the most "clearly defined" examples, describing the former as "part of a history of dehmanisation, denied citizenship and efforts to excuse and justify state violence".

Monika Bickert, Facebook's rulemaker-in-chief, said that Facebook was still considering how to deal with images of blackface that were not posted for "hateful reasons", including images of Morris dancers with blacked-up faces.

That practice, which is not universal and is most common along the border between England and Wales, has been controversial in Britain. The Joint Morris Organisation has also vowed to cast out any troupes that do it, arguing that its history is irrelevant beside its "potential to cause deep hurt".

Ms Bickert said: "Our policy is designed to stop people from using blackface to target or mock black people... [but] there could be circumstances where somebody might happen to be sharing images but they're not doing it for hateful reasons.

"Those are exactly the sorts of nuances, including the examples from the Netherlands and the UK, that we are looking at."

The decision was also headline news in the Netherlands, where debates have raged for years over the traditional Christmas folk character of Svarte Piet (Black Pete). De Telegraaf, a major daily newspaper with no relation to Britain's Telegraph, splashed it across the front page of its website, with one article accusing Facebook of being "driven by opportunism".

Piet, a helper of Saint Nicholas who features in the festival of Sinterklaas, is usually depicted by an actor in blackface, with exaggerated Golliwog-like features such as bright red lips, a curly black wig and gold earrings.

Black Netherlanders and anti-racist activists have condemned that version as discriminatory, often citing the Netherlands' long colonial past and involvement in the slave trade. Public support for a blacked-up Piet has dropped significantly since the start of the George Floyd protests, from 71pc in November to 47pc this June.

In a Dutch-language blog post, Facebook said: "Facebook does not consider it acceptable for people to feel discriminated against or feel unsafe because of certain messages. Sinterklaas is a party for everyone."

It said that non-stereotyped versions such as "Chimney Pete" or "Sooty Pete", which eschews black paint, are allowed.

Ian Craigan, foreman of the Silurian Wassail, a British Morris troupe whose members do black their faces, said a Facebook ban would not "make a blind bit of difference" to whether they continued the custom.

Historians and dancers are divided as to whether it began as an imitation of North African Moors or a simple disguise. Some believe that the word Morris is actually a corruption of "Moorish".

In the town of Settle, Yorkshire, a Morris troupe was reported to the local council by a mixed-race woman who said that she had felt "intimidated" and "uncomfortable", adding that it was "not something I thought I would ever see in England nowadays".

Mr Craigan argued that his group's practice was different from the Dutch Zvarte Piet, which he condemned. He described it instead as a tradition of "dissent and disguise" which had "nothing to do whatsoever with mocking or mimicking or denigrating".

He said that his group supports the Black Lives Matter movement, and that there had been extensive internal debates as to whether to continue the practice. Any decision to stop, he said, would not come until the autumn.