A Facebook user reported an image last week posted by a group on the social media called "Offensive Humor At Its Best," which contained an image of a woman with tape across her mouth, with the following typed over it: "Don't wrap it and tap it, tape her and rape her."
Feminist groups and advertisers were shocked in the days following as Facebook had responded to the complaints about hate speech as not violating the site's terms of service and defended its decision under the premise of preserving free speech, with the screenshot of the response going viral on the Internet, Think Progress reported.
The outrage regarding Facebook's inaction stemmed from a larger campaign beginning May 21, in which feminist organizations -- including Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, Rape Victims Advocates and V-Day -- wrote an open letter to the social network asking it to remove groups, pages and images "that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about," MSN reported.
More than 40 groups signed the letter.
The movement really started picking up traction Saturday when Everyday Sexism posted the aforementioned reported photograph suggesting rape that Facebook elected not to remove.
Groups also expressed outrage at Facebook's one-sided enforcement of its rules, removing images about women's breast health and citing it as "inappropriate," but protecting images mocking domestic violence as free speech.
Since then, at least 15 advertisers have pulled the plug on Facebook. Among the groups choosing to remove themselves from the site are Nationwide UK, Nissan UK, and J Street.
A petition began circulating acknowledging the difficulty of removing all offensive content from the site, but asking the platform to be more mindful and diligent of removing images condoning violence against marginalized groups. It has since collected more than 220,000 signatures.
A Twitter hashtag #FBrape also started in an attempt to stir action from the Palo Alto-based company.
Facebook released a statement Tuesday addressing the concerns of users, promising to "do better" in the future to make its site a more friendly environment.
"We work hard to remove hate speech quickly, however there are instances of offensive content, including distasteful humor, that are not hate speech according to our definition. In these cases, we work to apply fair,thoughtful, and scalable policies. This approach allows us to continue defending the principles of freedom of self-expression on which Facebook is founded," the statement said. ". . .That being said, we realize that our defense of freedom of expression should never be interpreted as license to bully, harass, abuse or threaten violence. We are committed to working to ensure that this does not happen within the Facebook community."
The social media website also included a list of ways it intends on solving the issue regarding hate speech and inappropriate content on its pages. The list reads as follows:
- We will complete our review and update the guidelines that our User Operationsteam uses to evaluate reports of violations of our Community Standards around hate speech. To ensure that these guidelines reflect best practices, we will solicit feedback from legal experts and others, including representatives of the women's coalition and other groups that have historically faced discrimination.
- We will update the training for the teams that review and evaluate reports of hateful speech or harmful content on Facebook. To ensure that our training is robust, we will work with legal experts and others, including members of the women's coalition to identify resources or highlight areas of particular concern for inclusion in the training.
- We will increase the accountability of the creators of content that does not qualify as actionable hate speech but is cruel or insensitive by insisting that the authors stand behind the content they create. A few months ago we began testing a new requirement that the creator of any content containing cruel and insensitive humor include his or her authentic identity for the content to remain on Facebook. As a result, if an individual decides to publicly share cruel and insensitive content, users can hold the author accountable and directly object to the content. We will continue to develop this policy based on the results so far, which indicate that it is helping create a better environment for Facebook users.
- We will establish more formal and direct lines of communications with representatives of groups working in this area, including women's groups, to assure expedited treatment of content they believe violate our standards. We have invited representatives of the women Everyday Sexism to join the less formal communication channels Facebook has previously established with other groups.
- We will encourage the Anti-Defamation League's Anti-Cyberhate working group and other international working groups that we currently work with on these issues to include representatives of the women's coalition to identify how to balance considerations of free expression, to undertake research on the effect of online hate speech on the online experiences of members of groups that have historically faced discrimination in society, and to evaluate progress on our collective objectives.
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