Lil B is a certified internet legend, not to mention a titan of the digital mixtape rap era. But Facebook has now banned the Berkeley, California rapper for the next month, temporarily cutting down his substantial online presence.
A Facebook representative confirmed to Motherboard that Lil B has been banned from the platform for 30 days for violating the site's hate speech policies. The spokesperson also said that the offending posts were deleted from the platform. On Sunday, Lil B tweeted that he was banned for "talking about white people" on the site. He normally posts multiple times a day on Facebook, but his page has been silent since October 4.
Lil B has been on a recent social media tear discussing, in blunt terms, complex issues about race in America. On Twitter and on Facebook, the rapper has recently called out everything from the double standards around visual codes for "threatening" and "safe" in society, to the legacy of slave ownership in the US. There's no question that the BasedGod is mad, but throughout it all he's peppered his critical posts with a message of love for everybody, no matter their skin colour.
Fans have been deeply divided in their reactions. Some have lauded Lil B for speaking so forcefully, while others bristled at what they perceived to be broad generalizations about white people. Facebook previously banned activist Shaun King for posting a racist message he received, but the company quickly removed the ban. Other prominent black activists, such as Didi Delgado and Ijeoma Oluo had also previously been banned by Facebook for their posts.
Facebook deleted the posts that incurred the 30-day ban before Motherboard could view them, and we've been unable to find archives or screenshots of them. (The Facebook rep wouldn't specify the offending posts, citing user privacy.) Requests for comment to Lil B over Twitter and email weren't immediately answered.
Regardless, with a Twitter following of more than one million people, Lil B will persevere. He'll be back on Facebook in no time. It's also not the rapper's first tangle with the social networking giant—in 2014 he claimed to be banned for 30 days from Facebook for his posts.
More importantly, we still have Black Ken, Lil B's triumphant 27-song mixtape from August. And for that, I have to simply say thank you, BasedGod.
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