Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has shared a “final message” in an hour-long video after he was banned by Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Tate was removed from the social media platforms this week after he expressed “misogynistic” and “derogatory” views about women.
TikTok confirmed it has permanently banned an account belonging to Tate, telling The Independent that misogyny is a “hateful ideology”. It also said it was in the process of removing clips shared on the platform by his fans.
Meanwhile Meta said Tate’s content violated its policies, and had been flagged under its guidelines on “Dangerous Individuals and Organisations”.
In a video shared to his new website on Wednesday (23 August), Tate claimed that many of the criticisms levied at him are based on clips that have been “taken out of context”.
“I have some responsibility to bear. I still blame myself, because my rise has been so meteoric and I became so famous so quickly,” Tate said.
“My responsibility is that any negative connotations in my videos are removed. The way you say things in a video that gets 500 views is very different from the way you say things in a video that gets 50 million views – the more people you reach, the more important it is that people don’t take things out of context.”
“If there was as many people cutting up videos like they did mine and those people had a negative agenda, they could make Mickey Mouse look evil, you could make anyone look bad”.
Content of Tate shared online has shown the former influencer saying that he finds 18-year-old women “more attractive than 25-year-olds because they’ve been through less d***”, and that women should “shut the f*** up, have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee”.
In an appearance on the Anything Goes with James English podcast last year, Tate said: “You can’t slander me because I will state right now that i am absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely a misogynist, and I have f*** you money and you can’t take that away.”
As noted by campaign group Hope not Hate, Tate also previously told The Fellas podcast that students of his online “academy” Hustler’s University were making money by sharing clips of his content on TikTok.
In his new video message, Tate said he did not previously try to challenge the criticisms prior to the social media bans because they didn’t “personally bother me”.
“Because I know they are false,” he claimed. “I live with a very pure heart.”
He said he understands why he was banned from Instagram, but added that he believes he has been “unfairly vilified”.
“I understand why they did it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a negative view of women, negative view of men negative view of a sexuality, it doesn’t matter what it is, it should be stopped, I agree with that,” Tate said. “Instagram has a responsibility to show it is listening to the public.”
In a statement to The Independent, Hope not Hate’s research director, Joe Mulhall commented: “In short, [Tate’s] ‘final message’ attempts to completely rewrite his behaviour, justify the unjustifiable, and despite repeatedly saying he takes responsibility, takes no responsibility for the harm his content has and is causing. It’s an attempt to save his reputation.”
“Tate can say what he wants but as the last week has shown, the public and social media companies know that his harmful content is unacceptable.”
