Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate banned from Instagram and Facebook
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has been banned from Facebook and Instagram, Meta confirmed to CBS News on Friday. TikTok and YouTube later followed their lead.
Tate, 35, was taken off both platforms because he was violating Meta's policies on dangerous organizations and individuals, according to Meta. The former professional kickboxer had 4.7 million followers on Instagram prior to the ban, according to the BBC.
Tate discussed the ban on a Twitch stream with popular streamer Adin Ross, saying he doesn't know exactly why he was barred from the platforms, and he trusts "due process."
"I'm not angry at them at any regard," he said. "It's not a big loss for me. It's not something I use too often. But I do understand their position."
Tate first rose to fame on "Big Brother (U.K.)" as a contestant in 2016 when he was removed from the show over a video that appeared to show him attacking a woman. He said the video was edited and "a total lie trying to make me look bad," the BBC reported.
Since then, he's become known around the world for expressing misogynistic views and criticizing women on different platforms. Among his controversial comments, he was suspended from Twitter in 2017 for saying women "bear responsibility" for being sexually assaulted, this as allegations against disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein were pouring in. He has also called women "intrinsically lazy" and he even explained how a man should have "authority" over a woman he's dating.
In recent years, he's become a towering figure to audiences on TikTok and YouTube – two sites that are overwhelmingly popular with teenagers.
While an account associated with Tate on TikTok has been permanently banned, CBS News learned Friday, the company says it continues to ramp up enforcement on videos of Tate expressing hateful ideologies. Those videos have been uploaded from different accounts. Videos with the hashtag #andrewtate have more than 13 billion views on TikTok.
"Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok," a company spokesperson told CBS News in a statement. "Our investigation into this content is ongoing, as we continue to remove violative accounts and videos, and pursue measures to strengthen our enforcement, including our detection models, against this type of content."
One of Tate's YouTube channels "Tate Speech," with over 750,000 subscribers was active last week, but the Google-owned company also banned him from the platform, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told CBS News on Monday.
YouTube issued a strike and seven-day suspension to Tate's "Tate Confidential" channel in July for posting content that violated their COVID medical misinformation policies, according to the company. Tate uploaded content to his Tate Speech channel within the seven-day suspension, and it led to the termination of channels associated with Tate, YouTube said, as circumventing a suspension by using another channel is against the company's terms of service.
"We terminated channels associated with Andrew Tate for multiple violations of our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, including our hate speech policy. If a channel is terminated, the uploader is unable to use, own or create any other YouTube channels," Choi said in a statement.
