Instagram deleted a post from right-wing figure Milo Yiannopoulos praising the recent mail bombs sent to prominent Democratic officials, after initially refusing to take the post down when it was reported as hate speech.
On Thursday afternoon, Yiannopoulos posted a picture of himself with a caption expressing his regret that the bombs hadn’t detonated. Yiannopoulos also told his 386,000 followers that he was upset that no mail bomb was sent to this publication, The Daily Beast.
“Just catching up with news of all these pipe bombs,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Disgusting and sad (that they didn’t go off, and the daily beast didn’t get one).”
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Some Yiannopoulos supporters on Instagram worried that the post would get Yiannopoulos banned from Instagram. But Instagram initially declined to take the post down after it was reported to the company by this reporter. Instagram said it “does not violate our Community Guidelines.”
Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, did not respond to requests for further comment before this article was first posted, with the headline “Instagram Refuses to Pull Down Milo Post Praising Mail Bombs.” Yiannopoulos’ post was removed roughly two hours later.
“This content violates our policies and has been removed from Instagram and Facebook,” Instagram spokeswoman Stephanie Noon said in an email. “We prohibit celebration or praise of crimes committed, and we will remove content praising a bombing attempt as soon as we’re aware.”
Yiannopoulos is, to put it mildly, an extremely controversial figure in right-wing media. He was banned from Twitter in 2016 and was forced to resign from Breitbart after making strangely positive comments on pedophilia and losing the support of the conservative billionaire Mercer family over his connections to white supremacist groups.
Still, Yiannopoulos retains some prominence in the pro-Trump media and is going on a speaking tour with conservative pundit Ann Coulter later this year.
“Bravo! Bravo!” one Yiannopoulos supporter had written below his post, which had earned nearly 3,000 likes on Instagram before it was removed. “To have the balls to say what us conservatives REALLY believe.”
