Social media platform Facebook says it has removed a series of hateful and misogynistic posts, memes and comments around US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

The action was reportedly taken on Monday (November 16), after the BBC flagged racist posts from Facebook groups that alleged Harris wasn’t “black enough” to be on the Democrat ticket.

Harris is claimed to not be a ‘true’ citizen of the US, due to her Jamaican-Indian ancestry; in other instances, posts demanded Harris be “deported to India”.

The rest of the hateful rhetoric just spewed vilifying remarks, mocking the US Senator’s name with memes and racist media.

While the BBC nor Facebook specifically named the groups, their respective memberships are quite large with numbers exceeding 1,200. At least one group is 4,000-members strong.

What’s more, Harris was not the groups’ only target, as Facebook also removed hundreds of sexually explicit posts about other people.

The policing of hate speech, covert and overt racism is a growing problem for Facebook despite its assurances 90% of these posts are taken down before they are flagged.

Hate speech has surged across the platform: an undeniable truth that even the company’s latest report on Community Standards Enforcement confirms.

The report, released on August 11, noted that Facebook took action on 22.5 million pieces of content that allegedly contained hate speech between April and June this year—up from just 9.6 million in the first three months of 2020.

The statistics are five times higher than for the same period last year, when Facebook said it had removed about 4.4 million pieces of harmful content in April to June 2019.

Interestingly, Facebook deleted the posts but took no direct action against the groups themselves, which has sharpened criticisms of the company’s toothless policy guidelines.

“However, despite the pages being places where hate-speech is regularly directed towards the vice-president-elect, Facebook said it would not take action on the groups themselves,” the BBC wrote.

Angelo Carusone, Media Matters for America (MMfA) president, is among those calling for Facebook to be tougher on hate speech.

“Facebook’s removal of this content only after it’s flagged to them by the media confirms that the rules and guidelines they establish are hollow because they put little to no effort into detection and enforcement,” Carusone said.

“We are talking about the lowest of low-hanging fruit from a detection perspective. And yet, these escaped Facebook’s notice until flagged by a third party,” he added.

Harris, 56, is the first black woman to have ever been elected Vice President. The former state attorney was born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father.