Several months ago, you may recall, feminist activists got Facebook to agree to remove blatant sexist hate speech from its site — much to the chagrin of many Men’s Rights Activists, like Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who declared, in a post filled with alarmist rhetoric, that “feminist ideologues are co-opting Facebook, and they will root out any and all opposition to their worldview.” AVFM’s John Hembling, meanwhile, denounced the feminist activists as “fascists.”
Ever since then, Men’s Rights activists have been playing a game of “gotcha” with Facebook, trying to prove that the hate-speech monitors there only care about misogynist hate speech, and don’t actually care about hate speech directed at men. Every few days, it seems, there is a new thread in the Men’s Rights subreddit purporting to document this alleged “double standard.”
Ten days ago, for example, a Men’s Rights Redditor called dizzy_j got nearly 400 upvotes for a post complaining that “I reported three anti-men Facebook pages for gender-based hate speech today. Only one was removed.” Six days ago, DerDietrich got 580 upvotes for submitting this supposed evidence of a double standard. Trouble is, you can’t actually prove a double standard with a handful of examples.
But I would like to suggest an alternate hypothesis, which also fits the anecdotal data provided thus far by the MRAs, and provide an additional piece of anecdotal evidence that supports my theory and undercuts theirs.
My hypothesis is that Facebook is shitty at recognizing and dealing with hate speech and harassment, no matter whom it’s aimed at.
My evidence for this? Well, yesterday bloggers at Skepchick noticed a Facebook page targeting a specific feminist/skeptic blogger and asking if she “should … be murdered.” The anonymous poster — who identified her by name and posted pictures of her on the page — coyly avoided a literal call for murder, writing instead:
We should not ever break the law. Rather, we should advocate , through lawful land constitutional processes, to have the law changed so that it is legal to kill [name redacted by DF]. Alternatively, we should, where legal, request that [name redacted by DF] kill herself. Relevant laws should be changed so that suicide, and advocating suicide, is legal.
The Skepchick bloggers reported the page to Facebook for its obvious violations of the site’s harassment policies.
And they received this reply from Facebook (I’ve covered up the blogger’s name):
I think it’s fair to say that if Facebook can’t recognize a page calling for the literal murder of someone as harassment there is something very wrong with its system for dealing with harassment and hate speech.
The page has since been taken down, though it’s not clear if it was removed by Facebook or by the original anonymous Facebooker.
Get your act together, Facebook.
Don’t be silly. If social media isn’t for bullying women, why does it even exist?
I once reported facebook pages that posted creep shots, and openly admitted that they wanted “no selfies” – just images of other people they had taken and were more than happy to post images, including nudes, of minors. I do believe they specifically asked for nudes – it was even in their page name.
I don’t mind nudes, but they should be consensually posted, which the creep shot pages clearly did not care for. And, in case of FB, not sexual or sexualized in context. Nobody should be posting images of minors.
One of the sites had a nude picture of a 17-year old boy with an erection. Not sure if it was posted with his consent or not. At least one site had panty shot of a little girl.
there was a discussion started by some young woman, where she said that their content was creepy, and in a lot of cases illegal or against FB terms, and said she reported it. The admins responded by removing all the images and REPOSTING THEM ON A NEW PAGE which they named in an almost identical way. They were also dumb enough to state on their original page that the images had been moved and a new site created.
I reported the sites, got no response about the other one as far as I can remember. (Both had their images removed while I filed the report) but the other one still had the young man’s image up. FB responded by telling me that the page had no content which violated facebook’s rules.
Uh-huh. That’s nice.
Up until a year ago, I thought it was for universally accusing atheists of having on morals, and Catholics of being child molesters? Oh, and talking about Button Moon.
Facebook: where it’s okay to call for the death of people you don’t like, but where it’s not okay to post a picture of your post-mastectomy tattoo and a message of hope. Good job.
Makes me happier to have deactivated my account on there now.
I think I’ve posted this video here before, or seen it here at least, but I just stumbled across it again and it still makes me laugh:
I’ve always wanted to be a feminist Muppet. I’d do back-up vocals for Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, and take Animal for walks.
Facebook: where a picture of a woman’s elbow that can be (briefly) mistaken for her nipple is banned, but calls for women to be raped and murdered are a-okay.
I have read that Facebook outsources their moderation work to poorly-paid people in developing nations (I don’t remember exactly which one, sorry). I’ve read speculation that it’s the reason for a lot of the seemingly random enforcement–a combination of lack of training, low pay and cultural differences.
I’m not sure of that, though, and feeling too lazy to do more than a cursory Google for it (which just brought up the claim on some blogs), so please take this with a huge grain of salt.
And of course, it doesn’t justify anything–if anything, it makes it worse because you’d think such a profitable company would be able to figure out a system with consistent standards and well-treated workers (haha I know, but I’m an optimist). It’s just a possible explanation for some of the more bizarre choices.
I was thinking the same thing. I had a profile on and off for a couple years (I kept deactivating it), and it’s been about a year since I completely deleted it. Never looked back. It’s a crap site.
With all the garbage on YouTube now, this is starting to be the only site I enjoy going to.
I am on Facebook, and I often think about quitting it but ultimately it’s my main regular contact with several very close friends (the kind you can not actually talk to for a year because you’re both wildly busy and on totally different schedules, and then go on a road trip which basically is you being trapped in a pickup truck together for 36 hours and still not have any awkwarndness or ever run out of things to talk about…yes, that actually happened; we had about 5 hours of sleep in between the two 18-hour drives!) and with a lot of extended family who I don’t really care to have a closer relationship with, but it provides a convenient way to share pictures and keep them updated enough that I don’t hear about it at the rare family reunion I attend. 😉 It’s really valuable to me, as problematic as it is as well.
Er, that was supposed to say “awkwardness.” I didn’t get a red squiggly under “awkwarndness” for some reason…
The facebook employee who went to twitter to defend allowing the page to stay up was a real hoot, too: he complained about being “fitted for a cross” by those of us asking how he could possibly support a company providing a platform for people to “jokingly” discuss murdering a college student. Because yeah, asshole, your tender feelings getting bruised on twitter is so much more the REAL issue that we need to discuss, not the fears of the actual victim or the despicable “ethics” of facebook.
*spit*
AK – awkwarndness should be a word. It sounds like a type of bird call, the awk warn(ing). Awkwarndness might be the bird equivalent of crying wolf.
Ah, the endless suffering of people who act like dicks and then get pushback for it. Truly the moral issue of our age.
There aren’t enough tiny violins for them. I just hope dudebro tears are happening.
Threadrupt! since the open thread seems moribund.
The Mick Aston
Memorial
Coat (complete with cat)
Facebook outsources its moderation to a company called oDesk, which pays people in third world countries $1 an hour to sift through an enormous number of complaints (around 250,000 per hour). For that dollar, they have to sift through a lot of whinging (“This fish looks like male genitalia and I have small children who might see it”; “I don’t think God would allow this”; etc.) but also really, really horrific acts (TW) – beheadings, mutilations, child molestation, war crimes, bestiality, necrophilia, all the sewage of the world. They probably spend an average of about 5 seconds evaluating each complaint. It takes a huge psychological toll on them. Turnover is frequent.
They’re directed to escalate a complaint only if there is specific intent to harm mentioned, e.g. “I’m going to stab so-and-so at the frat party on Friday”. Vague threats automatically get ignored.
Facebook needs to find a better way to deal directly with cyber-bulling, harassment, and stochastic terrorism. A few hundred underpaid staffers in Marrakesh can’t possibly stem the overwhelming tide of garbage.
@ buttercup
Yeah I’ve read of that too. Seen an article of one such worker calling for users to really think if what they are about to report is absolutely deserving of it, because screening has saved lives and going through useless gibberish can and has wasted enough precious seconds to have lead to someone’s death. There have been a number of cases where these report screeners have called the authorities when stumbling upon an alarming enough case.
It’s all really disturbing.
The reason I believe the pages I reported didn’t cause any action to take part was because
1. the images were swiftly removed once one of the people reporting them announced her intentions to the group
2. the new version did not have much material in it at the time, apart from the male nude which was easy to miss, since it wasn’t there on the front page
Facebook really needs to invest more in the system. It’s not a happy place to be due to the content.
I also dislike the entire system used for reporting is lacking imho.
The whole job is very unpleasant for the screeners, and the pay is shit too. I can imagine that many would bail out because of that just because of the emotional pressure / douchebaggery that is abound. Not to mention the wasted time for the pointless reports…
I wonder if they even view the pages that are reported. It’s so obvious by the titles of most of these reported pages that they’re hate speech and harassment. It’s so infuriating.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Facebook operates this way. Zuckerberg’s been pretty open in his contempt for the people using it; they’re the suckers, the losers, the source of income for him. They’re the product, not the customers. When the company owner is a piece of shit, it’s to be expected the whole setup will stink.
I can’t even imagine that kind of job. I chose my job because it while it’s medical it’s all about life and health instead of death and disease, I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that all the time.
Sidenote: OMFG I LOVE YOUR COAT kitteh!!
Kitteh, the coat (with or without the attendant cat) turned out wonderfully. How long did it take you?
::preens::
Thank ‘ee, ladies! 🙂
It took 26 days. Mind you, some of those days were eat, sleep, knit, and not a lot else!
Of course I had help. Fribs was quite sure there was no reason I couldn’t have her on my lap, on the coat, while I was sewing the seams. Humans are so unreasonable.
I wish it were cold where I live, so I could snuggle up in a nice coat just like that.
“This fish looks like male genitalia and I have small children who might see it”
*dies* don’t get your kids fish! They might see them MATE!! (Note from the serious department, get your kids fish, not goldfish, not a bowl, but a small tank with proper filter and some tetras or cories…you’ll probably get to explain how eggs got there and how baby fish are made and holy shit is that less awkward than waiting until puberty and talking about human sex! [Check that the fish store will take any offspring before you do this, unless you want to just set up a tank big enough to keep them…or let the parents eat the eggs…])
On topic! People seriously report shit like that? No wonder it takes a mass effort to get FB to pay attention for even five minutes. And I somehow doubt it would be hard to do the complaint coding so that if the same thing gets X complaints it automatically gets escalated.