Facebook’s Questionable Policy on Violent Content Toward Women

This article was written by Lara Hudson from Wired.com. Read the original article here.

"Women are like grass, they need to be cut regularly."

Update: 1/7/12 5:30 p.m. EST: Facebook reversed its position on the acceptability of the offending image.

Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities offers numerous guidelines regarding appropriate speech and user safety, including an admonition that “you will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user” and that “you will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”

But that hasn’t stopped countless users on the social media site from making comments, posting images and starting pages that promote the rape and abuse of women. And in many cases, it doesn’t mean that Facebook has any intention of stopping them, either.

Around Christmastime, an Icelandic woman named Thorlaug Agustsdottir came across a Facebook page titled “controversial humor – men are better than women,” and after bantering back and forth with a user whom she describes as a “troll,” she soon found herself staring back at a photo of herself posted on the wall. Her user image had been Photoshopped to look like she had been beaten, with a caption in Icelandic stating, “women are like grass, they need to be beaten/cut regularly.”

“You just need to be raped,” the commenter told Agustsdottir.

Agustsdottir reported the image to Facebook, tagging it as “graphic violence.” A few hours later she received a notice that the image did not meet the criteria for removal.

She reported the image several more times over a period of 24 hours, along with numerous other users, and all received the same response: “This photo wasn’t removed.” Finally, on New Year’s Eve — more than two days after her initial report — Agustsdottir contacted an Icelandic media outlet, DV.is, that broke the story, and it was soon picked up by other Icelandic news sources.

“To my great relief my countrymen responded swiftly and jumped on the Icelandic ‘report train’ – fortunately, there is no stopping the report train once it leaves the station,” Agustsdottir explained in anonline account of the incident.

The next day, says Agustsdottir, the image disappeared — removed either by Facebook or by the user — and not long afterwards the page itself was gone. Hours after the page was removed, Agustsdottir received yet another response to a report saying Facebook did not see anything actionable in its content.

The response from Facebook bothered Agustsdottir, who felt it reflected a lack of a clear policy regarding the promotion of violence toward women.

“I have to admit that I don’t understand the ways of Facebook,” Agustsdottir told Wired. “This is the Twilight Zone…. They need to start explaining what the heck is going on and why material that clearly crosses any moral line would come back gold-stamped ‘A-OK’ when reported.”

Nor is this the first time that the social media giant has been criticized for failing to remove content that threatened women with physical or sexual assault. In late 2011, Facebook took heat for failing to remove “joke” groups that advocated rape – like the charmingly named “You know she’s playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alley” page – despite petitions and media headlines like “Facebook is fine with hate speech, as long as it’s directed at women.”

Facebook’s response to the backlash indicated that they saw the pro-rape content of the pages as simple opinions: “It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining — just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook,” a representative of the social media site told the BBC. “Groups or pages that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs – even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some – do not by themselves violate our policies.”

After a Change.org petition collected over 200,000 signatures and the issue appeared in mainstream media outlets, some of the pages promoting the rape and assault of women were removed. Others were allowed to remain on the site if they were categorized as “humor” sites.

Given the seemingly inconsistent application of the site’s own guidelines regarding violent and threatening images and speech, it’s hard not to wonder: What is Facebook’s actual policy regarding content that advocates rape and violence toward women – or does one exist?

Wired reached out to Facebook for a comment, and a representative clarified the site’s position:

“We take our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities very seriously and react quickly to remove reported content that violates our policies. In general, attempts at humor, even disgusting and distasteful ones, do not violate our policies. When real threats or statements of hate are made, however, we will remove them. We encourage people to report anything they feel violates our policies using the report links located throughout the site.”

The online promotion of violence towards women also became a major issue in the videogame community last year when a female blogger named Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter to raise money for a video series exploring gender issues in videogames, and found herself on the receiving end of an online harassment campaign that included death and rape threats.

It also inspired an online game that allowed players to “beat” the young research student by clicking on a picture of her face until it become progressively blackened and bloodied – not unlike Agustsdottir’s face.

If the picture of Agustsdottir with a caption advocating violence against women wasn’t considered intimidation, harassment or hateful speech on Facebook for over 48 hours (or indefinitely), one wonders how the game starring Sarkeesian would have fared. Given Facebook’s track record and stated policies regarding this type of content, it would probably be categorized as “humor.”