Hitting back (1 Viewer)

[IFF]

jane;, what used to post here, wrote an incredible article last week on violence against women that stemmed from her own horrific experience. She posted it on Facebook who, bizarrely, removed it. Broadsheet have reposted it for her this morning and I thought it right we do the same. (nb. the formatting when a little pearshaped in the copy and paste so I've quickly put in my own paragraphs, apologies if they're confusing!)

when reading a column in yesterday's irish times i was reminded of this:

from "Facebook hate speech should have advertisers running" by Laura Slattery, Irish Times, Thursday 23rd May.

An open letter to Facebook by a large coalition of groups including Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project and End Violence Against Women has called on the social media company to recognise content that trivialises or glori- fies violence against girls and women as hate speech.
They also want Facebook to train moderators to recognise and remove such hate speech and understand how online harassment interacts with a real- world pandemic of violence against women.
Pages appearing on Facebook at the time the open letter was written included – and I apologise in advance, but this is what we’re dealing with – Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus, Kicking Your Girlfriend in the Fanny because She Won’t Make you a Sandwich and Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs.
Pages like these tend to survive the moderation process, the letter asserts, while Facebook regularly removes pictures of women breastfeeding.
In its own community guidelines, Facebook prohibits hate speech and regularly removes content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic. However, a commonly deployed disclaimer that gender-based hate speech is really humour in disguise, “literally treats violence targeting women as a joke”, the campaigners note.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...ech-should-have-advertisers-running-1.1404164

unfortunately if advertisers cared about violence against females, then no one would advertise on family guy and it would have been cancelled (and stayed cancelled) due to no advertising.

facebooks response to the issues in ms. slattery's article is http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...ook-defends-position-on-hate-speech-1.1404239

but what this and facebook's removal of Jane's piece shows a worrying anti-female attitude on the moderators at facebook.