‘Facebook feminism’. It sounds great. Where do I click ‘Like’?!
‘Facebook feminism’. It sounds great. Where do I click ‘Like’?!
With a community of more than 1 billion users, Facebook is not only a pretty huge and interesting case study in social behaviour, but it is also a cultural and economic force.
When you shove so many different beliefs into the same boxing ring, a few black eyes are bound to result. But when the internet is used to bolster a systematic culture of violence and discrimination towards a certain group of people – women, in this case – it crosses the boundary of individual differences in opinion.
Recently, nearly 100 feminist and social justice groups formed a coalition to address what they saw as the overwhelming culture of misogyny on Facebook.
They wrote an open letter to the social media giant, asking it to review the warped moderation policies that allowed content glorifying or making fun of sexual and physical violence against women to go unchecked despite (literally) thousands of complaints lodged against them.
This while banning users for posting their breastfeeding pictures and artistic or political representations of nudity after one or two complaints.
The feminist coalition called for Facebook to recognise this as hate speech and train their moderators to deal with it effectively.
Predictably, the campaign unleashed a flurry of debate surrounding free speech. Are feminists censoring the internet? To me, it’s not about individuals’ right to free speech.
In real life and on the internet, there will always be people who say things that are degrading and abusive. But Facebook is a gigantic community that has to set a standard for its members about what is acceptable, and what won’t be tolerated.
With its limp approach to moderating discriminatory content, Facebook is making a statement about what it stands for.
They said it loud and clear: it’s okay to make ‘jokes’ that suggest beating, raping, and killing women is not only acceptable, but to be expected, and laughed at.
Facebook eventually issued a release committing to a review of its moderation policies and process, but their long silence won’t be forgotten.
By disregarding the 50 000 tweets and 4 500 support emails the campaign garnered in one short week, Facebook showed that it didn’t really care what its users wanted.
Can anyone say ‘horrible marketing scheme’?
While eliciting any kind of commitment from the slippery social media kingpin was a landmark ‘win’ for feminism, the sad truth is that profits trumped people.
Facebook needs to employ more moderators, train them better, and dig deep to find that sense of human dignity that should inform its community standards and policies.
It should not uncritically reflect a flawed society, but aim to use its amazing power to fight for a world we all want to live in – both online and offline.
And you need to use your support to vote for what you believe in. Read this column online for links to read the open letter sent to Facebook, their response, and other interesting views on the issue.
Gobbledygeek is a local look at global technology trends. This week’s column was written by Grocott's Mail New Media Producer Kayla Roux.
