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.
He doesn’t yell BOOM but he does make scary growling noises from a dark alley just before he appears …
There are other gameplay tweaks as well. I think it’s based on the community patches, but I haven’t checked them against each other to get a note of the differences. And it replaces the clans – that’s why I have two separate installs. It copied straight over my copy though, so I’m going to say yes.
Well… they’re really more like guidelines.
(I’m a vampire! Fuck the rules! BLEARH!)
Scary growly noises sound fun from the Blessed one! I’m gonna have to watch it… but first I’m gonna have to sleep – it’s 4am on a school night! O_O;
Niters! 🙂
G’night!
I mean…. ZZZZZZZZ
I’ll go two copies then, it’s screwy enough as it is, cuz mac. Thanks!
And yeah, guidelines, cuz fucking fuck Ming and her tentacles!
G’night!
I quite like using Facebook because my friends and family are scattered all over, and also I use it for uni society stuff. It is handy to have so much in one place. I use a fake name on FB and a profile pic that is an animal, which has really helped keep away people I don’t want to add me. It isn’t that hard for a determined stalker to work it out, but it does stop people (ex school mates, certain ex bfs in particular) seeing my name show up in comments somewhere and go “Ohhhh, poke/message/friendrequest/bother” on a whim. I don’t like facecbooks attitude though…I wish there was a less dickish alternative.
As for ‘letting’ your partner do things, I HATE that kind of talk. In some cases I suppose you could be ‘letting’ them do things (use my paintbrushes? borrow my nail polish?) but really, ‘letting’ them go out with friends or have hobbies…is just, urgh. It is so annoying to hear people talk about things that way. Gets me a bit especially cause my ex was all ‘Oh she let me come out’ ‘I’ll see if i’m allowed to go to this’. Referring to me as a ‘ball and chain’ and a witch and stuff like that…I never tried to stop him doing stuff, ever. We didn’t even live together! There was just this weird expectation that I should object to him going to the pub alone and that I should want to ‘keep an eye on him’ all the time. I went out to stuff and travelled without him all the time and it made me feel a bit weird, like he thought he was ‘letting’ me out without him and I would stop if he decided he didn’t like it anymore or something…made me a bit uneasy.
Aaand didn’t mean to try to make it into the ‘all about Monster’ thread.
Frankly, a thread all about monsters is a cool thing. How awesome. Is the Monster better now, in a happier place? I hope so.
Facebook is a useful tool. I share about as much of my personal life there as I do here. If you are now going: “But who the hell are you, Fibi?” or “… Yes, and I wish you’d stop with the personal stuff, I don’t care”; either of those two approaches work! Or anything in between.
Which is to say my profile picture is a *cat* and I only ever post quotes from books, then use it to book events for the company I work for. Juggle things. Dance. instruct sword fighting. I grew up with the notion of the Internet being there as thing in the background, that you had, all the time. *Not* being on Facebook (or the net) is a weird thought now – how would I reach people? Look at cat pictures?
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
Mine is on epic lockdown. You can see only the stuff FB requires be public, have to friend me to message me, etc. My photo is my actual face though…sorta…the ex-FWB does photography on the side, my photo is from my Wayward Victorian Girl shoot.
Of course, my legal name is generic enough there was (is?) a FB group of us.
Also, babies. The people I grew up with are all having them. And thus my feed is the squee show.
Reblogged this on ok Naija!.