Facebook bows to pressure, vows to rid itself of sexist hate speech A coalition of women's groups has succeeded in persuading Facebook to review how it moderates its users so that hate speech and posts promoting violence against women can be kept off the site. The #FBrape campaign - which took off across Facebook, Twitter and other social networks since its introduction last week - urged …
This just in: there are groups and organizations which are oriented towards reducing hate and violence against specific segments of society. The reason is twofold: that there is so much hate in the world that simply promoting a message of opposing hatred and violence in general has not traditionally been successful, and people tend to look after their own self-interest.
To my mind, any cause which seeks to reduce violence should be applauded. If you are oh-so-concerned about hate speech against men, why don't you do something about it besides complaining on an Internet forum? Why don't you join or form an organization devoted to reducing hate against men or humans in general?
I won't hold my breath. In the meantime, take your concern trolling elsewhere.
You don't get it. They aren't just fighting for their specific segment of society. They do so whilst implying that they are the only ones being picked on.
Almost a month ago, a video of a woman being beheaded, and 2 men being beheaded, were posted to facebook, and not removed. This same group of people complained about the way facebook is biased against women because the female video wasn't removed. The fact that both videos remained up after complaints showed it was not a sexism issue - but they made it out to be.
Most normal people would be complaining about a person being beheaded graphically, not related to what sex they are.
If I was to set up a group for men, I wouldn't make comments about anti-men videos, whilst conveniently ignoring the anti-women videos, and then say that men were being picked on.
As a previous poster mentioned, it's only sexism when it affects women.
This is why some of the feminist groups are actually doing women a disservice, as most of my intelligent female friends agree.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/02/facebook_decapitation_video/
Your 'trolling' comment just highlights your ignorance.
The other Reg article you posted makes no mention of the same group even being aware of the male beheading video, just that they were complaining about the double standard that it's okay to display graphic (or even "joke") violence towards women but that it's not okay to post, for example, pictures of breastfeeding or certain art. I saw nothing in the previous article indicating that the group was condoning displays of violence towards men, merely that they were choosing to focus on the female violence issue.
If you don't understand why the issue of violence against women is worth focusing on, specifically, then the ignorance, I'm afraid, is yours.
I'm not going to debate the merits of feminism, its relevance, or the issue of violence towards women in the context of society on an IT forum (although I reserve the right to change my mind), so I'm going to set everything else aside.
Is there pictures on FB gloryfiing domestic violence towards men? There are plenty like this one:
http://static.lorientlejour.com/images/news/multimedia/201305/SUNDAY-pm-sure-sheilas-wheels.png
Is there pages on FB gloryfiing men rapes? There are plenty like this one:
https://twitter.com/EndingViolence/status/338510885041623040/photo/1
There is indeed a specific violence and hatred towards women. It's logical then there is a group 'specializing' fighting that specific violence. It does not mean this group endorses other kind of hatred.
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What are they campaigning against? If it is against actual rape culture, or demeaning tripe like showing a scantily clad woman, with overlays saying "and then they cry when they get gang-raped" I'm all for it. But if it's against black comedy humor, not so much.
I've actually reported actual hate speech sites, which seem to be real common among the far right-wing leaning sites, but FB never acts or judges "it's OK for us". I have a gut feeling that these pages won't be acted against, as nobody has spoken out as the #FBrape women have...
A few weeks ago I reported a page to FB moderators that had a picture that it said was of Terry Venebles, and was promoting stringing him up from the nearest tree. I have no idea if the photo was genuine or not, but the page had over 20000 likes, and looking at the comments section which was in the hundreds of thousands, I have no doubt that if located, the chap in the photo will probably end up dead.
About 30 seconds later I got a reply back from Facebook admins that the page violated no facebook terms, and if I didn't agree, visit the feedback page and leave some.
The day after, the page owner started posting the identities of peoplw who had PMd him to say they had reported the page, and suggesting that some summary justice on these Venebles supporters be carried out by the pages supporters. This comments section then ran into the hundreds of thousands.
"the page owner started posting the identities of peoplw who had PMd him to say they had reported the page, and suggesting that some summary justice on these Venebles supporters be carried out by the pages supporters. "
..............In a word--- NASTY!
I knew someone once who ran a right-leaning blog, and viewed himself as on a holy war to destroy the 'liberals' he believed were corrupting America. There used to be an active-if-slow community in the comments to argue with him, mostly trolls. He had a recurring enemy who wrote an unrelated blog.
After an especially vicious argument, he registered a new domain with the name of that enemy's blog and started posting material in their name advocating for the legalisation of child pornography and the elimination of age of consent laws. When called out on this epic level of assholery, he claimed that he had paid money for the domain and that meant the name was legally his, so he could post whatever he wanted there.
The internet is full of crazy people. These people tend to have some sort of trigger that will fill them with an unrelenting drive to hurt whoever they see as their enemies, even if doing so is self-destructive. Politics, religion, football teams, insulting an actor they adore. Often something trivial. That's why Facebook's real name policy is so dangerous: If the person I described had known the real name of his enemy, I imagine there would have been some anonymous 'tip-offs' to his employer or a even a personal visit with a golf club.
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"In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria."
Ah, how we remember the olden days of swords and arrows, back when rape wasn't a crime. FaceB0rk wants to sell us that for only a few dollars, and a few friends!
Since the word "outdated" has sprung up, and being rape is now illegal, wouldn't this make FaceB0rk outdated as well? Or is FaceB0rk already outdated?
I can understand trying to get actual rape / abuse groups shut down. But I looked through the first 20 or so example found on the movement's site:
http://www.womenactionmedia.org/facebookaction/examples/
And they are hilarious. This is just pure PC bull. While the type of humor may not be for everyone, it certainly shouldn't be banned. Campaigns like this trivialize ACTUAL rape and abuse.
I'm going to have to agree with Franklin here, none of the 20 images seemed funny let alone hilarious. Well, that is a partial lie (19 / 20 lie?). This one right I'm linking to reminded me of an old S.N.L. skit with Phil Hartman, so yes, I did laugh.
http://womenactionmedia.org/cms/assets/uploads/2013/05/SATURDAY-chloroform.png
The thing is some of those pictures are pretty gruesome (near as I can tell, with their crappy censorship) but some of them are just potentially offensive jokes. And that these people who want to tell others what they can and can't put online apparently don't see the difference is a big cause for concern.
...then there is no freedom of speech. Hint: Free speech/expression protections (like the 1st amendment in the US) aren't there to protect popular, protected-group-approved speech.
Or put another way, trying to ban someone's speech because you hate what they say is ITSELF hate speech. Arguably the most hateful of all. I'm probably more disgusted by the kinds of posts they're talking about than many/most, but I will still defend someone's right to post them, no matter how much I stand against the content.
I would call for a boycott of FB, but they're doing a pretty good job of driving people away all on their own.
"Freedom of speech" doesn't apply to a private network or private medium owned by private citizens. If a newspaper refuses to run certain ads or print your letter to the editor, your freedom of sppech has not been infringed.
In any event, Facebook never was, and never will be, anything like a medium for free speech. Since Day 1, Facebook has always blocked or removed speech they deem inappropriate. Whether it's pictures of mothers breast-feeding, paid ads for anti-breast-cancer charities, sexually explicit words or images, links to sites that sell or advertise guns, racist posts or images, ads for cigarettes, ads for penny auction sites, content about making or selling explosives, anti-gay content or images, and so on, and so on, and so on, Facebook has ALWAYS placed limits on what they will and won't permit.
It seems weird to me that they prohibit images or posts about violence against people on the basis of race or religion or nationality, but until now haven't prohibited the exact same content directed at women.
I'd like to stop getting dating site "sponsored for you" shit on my wall. I don't want dating suggestions from fb or its tributary affilliates. I don't want boob or ass (clothed or otherwise) hittting me in the face every f*cking day and every partial day when I tab back to the site to check on things. It seems they took away the "x" button to suppress the shit, or I've gotten so annoyed by it that I cannot SEE the "x" anymore.
I wish there were a way to tell those sites that they offend me and that they are paying fb for nothing, getting nothing valuable back from me, and that I share with my friends that such "sponsored pages/sites" offend me.
Most things I can just ignore, but I don't want to "just ignore" sultry-positioned women. It, to me, is a demeaning activity, the activity of blitzing me with them.
The problem with invoking freedom of speech or censorship arguments here is that the means by which the information is published has moved on rapidly from the concepts that ideals of freedom of speech and censorship were supposed to address.
If you as a person stand up and say "I believe X", whatever X is, then you should not be punished for it (although you may be criticized) and you should not be refused publication based simply in the argument you present. That, I think everyone can agree on.
If an untraceable anonymous publication is made that urges people to kill their neighbours and rape their wives, does this deserve the same degree of protection? Arguably, by remaining under the veil of anonymity, you forfeit your right to publication in any case - your posts can be removed and it's not censorship - because you're not opening yourself up to proper criticism or legal recourse should there be any. In traditional media, it's the difference between publishing a scientific paper expounding some theorem (which the majority may well disagree with or object to) versus scrawling graffiti in a public place. You're not going to argue that the council can't remove the graffiti? It simply doesn't deserve the same degree of protection because the author is not accountable.
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Come back to me when it's not that time of the month, in the meantime if you want the site cleaned up do it yourself, that's what women are good for isn't it?
I honestly only see one major problem with this, (not the above sentence there are lots of problems with that) there are going to be people who fail to see where the line is drawn. No longer allowed to show bruised women? What about news reports? I know the group says they only want the ones making out violence to be a joke removed, but there's bound to be somebody who shares a story of a video and makes a smart alic comment at one point of it. And that will get removed even though it shares quite a serious story.
Or the people who post pictures of themselves. I've had pictures of friends who've posted online with black eyes etc, normally because of something stupid. If new rules are passed although those pictures aren't the targets, there's bound to be somebody who interperets it that way and removes it.
Removing violence against a certain gender / race / blah is all well and good if it's done across the board, but just targetting one group will normally lead to it being... over moderated?
This is some kind of censorship. Looks more political than social. It is tantamount to forcing someone to believe in something against his/her will. It doesn't matter what kind of joke something is. A joke is a joke and people need to see the humour in it than anything else. There are numerous anti-male jokes and posters around Facebook. I don't see any Women's group voicing against that. So it is pretty clear that they aren't pro-equality. They are just trying to propagate a singular worldview which is harmful to both genders.
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