Amid the current anti-racism protests and controversial presidential comments, the inaction of Facebook has been glaringly obvious to see. On several occasions in the past, the platform’s inability to work proactively has been cited in other traumatic incidents, such as the Christchurch mosque shootings last year.

The most recent action taken by Facebook though, is pleasing to see, with the Associated Press reporting at the weekend that the platform removed roughly 200 accounts that were linked to hate groups in some way.

The AP adds that the groups in question include the Proud Boys and American Guard, both of which have been banned from Facebook in the past.

Facebook says that it was already planning to remove the accounts, but that it had to act quicker than anticipated as it became clear that members of these groups would be planning acts of violence at the anti-racism protests.

“We saw that these groups were planning to rally supporters and members to physically go to the protests and in some cases were preparing to go with weapons,” Brian Fishman, Facebook’s director of counterterrorism and dangerous organisations policy, told the AP.

It’s unclear the extent to which these hate groups were prepared to disrupt the protests, or indeed how close they were to doing so, but being proactive in this case is always the best measure in our books.

With Facebook ramping up its efforts as far as identifying and removing hate groups from its platform goes, we only hope that the same kind of action is taken when people in positions of over incite similar types of violence.

If Mark Zuckerberg’s comments of late are anything to go by, we’re far from that happening at this stage.