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(Image source: Facebook)
BY MATT PICHT
Facebook sent a strong message to its users this week: Trolls, take a hike! The social
media company announced Tuesday it will work to start eliminating gender-based hate speech
from its social media platform.
The effort began on May 21, when activist groups Women, Action, and the Media and The
Everyday Sexism Project launched a campaign calling on Facebook to improve its content
policies on gender-based hate speech. The movement soon swelled to include over 100
other organizations that bombarded Facebook with tweets and emails over the course of
the week.
And on Tuesday, Facebook responded with
a promise to step up its content restrictions, vowing to work with activist groups to better
define what constitutes hate speech and to hold users accountable for the content they
produce.
The announcement is being hailed as a historic
turning point in the fight against gender-based hate speech. Laura Bates, founder of The Everyday
Sexism Project, told CNN Facebook's influence will have a very powerful effect in determining
the limits of acceptable behavior on the Internet.
"Facebook has a huge reach with over a
billion users. And that means that it does have a very exciting opportunity to shape
cultural norms, and what is publicly and socially acceptable or not."
But the move has some free speech advocates questioning Facebook's commitment to an open
Internet. A writer for GigaOM says while it's hard to object to Facebook blocking this
specific content, policy decisions based on public outcry or ad revenues could be a slippery
slope.
"As more than one free-speech advocate has noted, if popular protests about offensive
content were what determined the content we were able to see or share a few decades ago,
anything promoting homosexuality or half a dozen other topics would have vanished from
our sight."
And it wasn't just the activism that prompted
Facebook to act: 15 prominent companies, including Nissan and Nationwide, pulled their Facebook
ad campaigns after these ads were displayed next to offensive content. A writer for Businessweek says
it's clear the way to Facebook's heart is through its pockets.
"Why Facebook ever saw the content in question here as anything but a commercial liability
remains a mystery to me, but once that fact was demonstrated, action was probably inevitable.
What advertisers say goes. Those who want to influence Facebook in the future, take
note."
And just a friendly reminder: As a private
corporation, Facebook isn't restricted by the First Amendment and has the legal right
to regulate the content that appears on its site.