"Facebook's South Africa problem: Just what exactly is 'white nationalism'?", 8 April 2019.

Facebook, under enormous pressure to be more conscious about the content on the platform, has recently announced that beginning immediately it will start taking down posts that support white nationalism and white separatism. But what exactly is 'white nationalism' and how would it apply in South Africa?...

The change has happened in the wake of the terrorist attack, live-streamed on Facebook, on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed 50 people...It also comes in the wake of an editorial published in the Washington Post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling for greater government regulation — a move that elicited a wide range of responses ranging from guarded support to outright cynicism...the change was in fact a response to leaked internal training documents for Facebook moderators which banned white supremacist content, but allowed white separatist and white nationalist content because the organisation believed that a general rule forbidding white nationalism and separatism would inadvertently ensnare other, legitimate movements like "black separatist groups, and the Zionist movement, and the Basque movement"...From now on, people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, but "we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism", Facebook said...All of this constitutes a huge change for Facebook, which until recently regarded itself primarily as a platform, pure and simple, and not a content producer, and that its users were ultimately responsible for their own contributions...

How would Facebook deal with an organisation such as AfriForum, for example, that would not consider itself to be a white separatist organisation, but certainly at least partially defends apartheid? Facebook does have a list of designated organisations, but Casseus [Facebook's public policy manager] says he is personally not familiar with AfriForum and would be seeking to learn more.