Rapper and social media icon Lil B was suspended from Facebook for 30 days for violating the social network’s hate speech policies.
Vice’s Motherboard confirmed with Facebook that Lil B was banned as a result of writing two separate posts following the shooting in Las Vegas in which he criticized “white people” for their love of guns. The posts were deleted from Facebook, prompting Lil B to share with Motherboard the two posts that got him banned.
“White people are the only ones who love guns U can tell they are violent people! I don’t live in fear, I don’t need a gun,” the rapper wrote. “IF WHITE PEOPLE PUT DOWN THE GUNZ WE ALL BE SAFE BUT NOPE! THEY VILENT.”
A spokesperson from Facebook speaking with Motherboard called their policies “race-neutral” and defended the company’s decision.
“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,” Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja told Motherboard.
Lil B, or @lilbthebasedgod, shared screenshots of the two offending posts on his Twitter page, where they still remain. But his Facebook has remained silent since Oct. 4. The rapper has a huge social media following of nearly 400,000 likes on Facebook and 1.43 million followers on Twitter.