Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Why is Facebook Protecting Pro Rape Language and Abuse of Women?

Looks like this has been a widespread problem for at least a year....Here are some highlights, the entire article is great! (by Melissa Gira Grant)

"Despite a campaign that included 180,000 signatures, Facebook continues to post pro-rape pages, showing, yet again, that they care about users so long as they're profitable.

If it was not clear before, we must understand now that Facebook wasn't built for us — it was built for the profit of the very few. That Facebook is of value to the public as a communications platform is only important to Facebook insofar as it allows them to sell targeted advertising against our own speech. Its governing document, the Terms of Service , has been repeatedly applied unfairly and without accountability to its users, as its purpose is to legally protect Facebook from our conduct, not provide us with a free space, or even a safe space. Facebook needs to be only as minimally welcoming to us so as to ensure our return to use it again. And that we might use Facebook as a public square for activism? Not even in the business model.

It's not all doom and censorship on Facebook, of course. Digging into the profiles of users who had "liked" some of the rape-is-funny pages, feminist writer Amanda Marcotte created a little dossier on a few of them. As Facebook requires users to set up their profiles using a real name, you don't need a subpoena to click through and learn about these rape page fans' hometowns, employers, and even relationship statuses. Here, the terms of service on Facebook allow for quite a different experience of unmasking a sexist harasser than, say, tracking down the endless legion of anonymous troll commenters who leave little more than an IP address behind as a calling card. "

http://www.alternet.org/story/153406/why_is_facebook_protecting_pro_rape_language_and_abuse_of_women

No comments:

Post a Comment