Facebook has finally banned white nationalism on its services, reversing a long-held policy that such activity was not necessarily racist.

The social network said that it would ban "praise, support and representation" of white nationalism and separatism on both Facebook and Instagram, starting from next week.

The decision ends a long battle with civil rights activists, who argued that Facebook's policies were providing a loophole for neo-Nazis and other extremists to organise freely on its services.

Previously, Facebook drew a distinction between white nationalism, which it defined as calling for the separation of different races, and white supremacy, the belief that whites whites as superior to other races. Its moderation guidelines had described the former as "[not] always associated with racism".

But critics said that the two ideas were almost always intertwined, or even interchangeable, and that "white nationalism" was little more than a PR tactic by white supremacists to escape censure.

"Our policies have long prohibited hateful treatment of people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity or religion – and that has always included white supremacy," said the company in a blog post.

"We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism – things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity.