I’ve always wondered how anyone could get away with some of the things they say on social media websites. Try going under any controversial story, picture or video and I bet you will find something offensive. Although there are tons of offensive images, comments etc. on Facebook I am going to focus on the hateful offensive images of women. There’s a Facebook group called “Men are better than Women” and on this page there was an image of a woman who appeared to be tied to some concrete object, bloody and beaten. An Icelandic woman named Thorlaug Agustsdottir (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/) wrote a response post about the page which resulted in her being harassed and threatened by members of the group. An image of Thorlaug was altered so that her face appeared to be bloody and beaten was posted on the Facebook page. She reported the image and the site to Facebook asking it to be removed. It wasn’t until Thorlaug contacted her local press to report Facebook’s response, or lack thereof, and 50 other users reported the image that they finally decided to remove the image.
Facebook’s initial response to Thorlaug’s report was, “We reviewed the photo you reported,” came Facebook’s auto reply, “but found it does not violate Facebook’s Community Standards (https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards) on hate speech, which includes posts or photos that attack a person based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.” The comments under the altered picture of Thorlaug include, “you just need to be raped” and “women are like grass, they need to be beaten/ cut regularly,” but Facebook says this doesn’t violate their standards. They then went ahead and labeled the pages content as controversial humor, but I don’t see anything funny about this whole situation.
Now after all this talk about community standards and all, Facebook and YouTube just recently removed a video due to too much controversy. The video is called, F-Bomb for Feminisim: Potty Mouthed Princess use Bad Word for a Good Cause (http://fckh8.myshopify.com/). Each of the princess costume girls address pay inequality, gender expectations and sexual assault with an unexpected twist. The clip features cursing abundantly (“Fuck that sexist shit!”) about the pay gap, rape and violence against women. After watching the video would you say it was against any of the standards that Facebook stands so strongly by? I don’t think so, but it was removed because of the controversy against kids dropping the f bomb, even though it got people’s attention and it was a for a good cause. The whole craze over this video and girls using the F bomb makes a good point. Society is more offended by a couple of girls saying fuck than they are by the fact that 1 out 5 women are sexually assaulted and raped.
AyanaJessica 