Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
Why are they even concerned about this? "Sexual assualt 'humor'" is in the extreme minority of posts on facebook. Maybe they don't want their ads next to it but that's what they signed up for. They wanted their ads next to whatever people posted on facebook knowing that the content was out of their control.
Maybe they didn't anticipate that a site that rigorously polices (for example) breast-feeding pictures and race hate material wouldn't rigorously police "rape a bitch" image macros.
They have discovered that having their ads next to this sort of content is not what they signed up for, after all, and are planning to unsign up for this stuff. Companies change their minds all the time about where they advertise - advertising on a service isn't some sort of lifetime promise.
Anyone who has used the internet for any length of time knows there are large amounts of disturbing content on it which will definitely spill into any user generated content site. I find it hard to believe that 15 separate companies failed to realise this, especially since I would expect their advertising departments to be well read on "the internet".
What I think may be happening is one company latching onto a group of activists with a very reasonable request to get some positive press and a bunch of companies "me too"ing along behind them. 4 companies were named in this article and 2 of them got airtime on NBC with the most inoffensive sound byte ever ("we are against rape"). That's free TV air time in a news slot appealing to your core demographic.
While I don't discount that they're going to get some press over this, raising issues over Facebook tacitly supporting rape culture is perfectly acceptable for a company.
A shitstorm ensued, with people blaming Audible and/or Facebook for showing an ad next to such an image (it's rather hard to parse a meme photo for what text is actually written on the image, right?) You can see more info about this on a google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+audible+tape+her+an...
I guess Audible has leaned heavily on Facebook to respond to what has apparently been a very difficult PR issue for them.
Disclosure: I have nothing to do with Facebook or Audible, I am just passing on what I have heard from people involved.
> it's rather hard to parse a meme photo for what text is actually written on the image, right?
Actually it's trivial, but I suspect it's just not being done because most pictures on facebook don't have text so why would facebook bother?
EDIT: ah, no, it just scrapes QuickMeme's UI for the entered text. Oh well...
[Edit] Since I got a downvote right away, here is my reasoning: Rape of any form is terrible. But the reaction to rape of females shouldn't be changing the subject to rape of males. It's diminishing the gravity of both by brushing away the importance of one with an inappropriate overstating of the other. And that's precisely the style of discussion prevalent in r/mensrights and it would be terrible if that made its way over to HN.
According to surveys 7 - 12% percent of males report having been the victim of a sexual assault with the vast majority of victims having been assaulted while minors. The rate of sexual assaults against males is increasing. It is a serious and increasing problem.
I suppose what kind of threw me off was that the image linked as an example by the poster could be understood as both a male and female version of sexual assault "jokes". Still, the implication is clearly male, just as the implication of the article was clearly female. (Actually, a little more than just implication, but the title sets to tone to be a little more general.)
One point I do still maintain is that there simply is a clear imbalance between sexual assault on females and males. Yes, that does not change the gravity of either, but it does suggest how the conversation about it ought to run. If it were the other way around, seeing society predominantly talk about female sexual assault would be troublesome. But it is not and thus pulling the conversation towards male sexual assault kind of rings my alarm bells. Just as the implication is universally female, bringing up male sexual assault implies trying to diminish it being a predominantly female issue.
It is accurate that sexual assault against females gets the center stage and it is just as correct that sexual assault against males is a serious issue.
Your point about sexual assaults against males being rising is interesting - do you happen to have a link on that? My immediate theory would be that while there might be a rise, it can only ever be a rise in reported assault. So I would guess that it is probably increased by the fact that we as a society have become more open to accept males as victims of sexual assault in the first place. But I would be interested in seeing actual data on that.
uhhh...???
Jokes about male rape are accepted by the mainstream more than female rape jokes, in my opinion, specifically prison rape. Under almost any article/image about some criminal (particularly violent criminals) or suspected criminal that has numerous comments, you will find facetious comments about how that criminal will/should be raped in prison. Now, I asked my original question because, if facebook do start to remove jokes about male rape, it will affect a larger number of people and perhaps affect people that do not feel that a joke about male prison rape is actually a rape joke and I find that interesting.
Perhaps when the mainstream media starts agitating over it...
- Hate speech or symbol
- Spam or scam
- Graphic violence
- Drug use
- Nudity or pornography
That is not trampling the First Amendment. There are plenty of other hate forums where people who are afraid of a slippery slope can freely enjoy and share rape jokes.
Correct - that only refers to prohibition of government censorship.
I suspect that Facebook wants to keep things "nice" (for some value of "nice") so that the advertisers won't get spooked away and they can continue on their trajectory of world domination.
The trouble is that not every user, advertiser, or activist group agrees on what is "nice", or at least "permissible".
And it's more than just offense in this case. Sexual assault is a very serious and terrible thing to have happen. Joking about it legitimizes and normalizes it, contributing to incidents. I imagine it's the same thing as with hate speech: it could prompt acts of violence toward people of the targeted group.
At what point do you let people share ideas freely without holding them responsible for what "might happen"? When can a joke "just be a joke"?
People posting on Facebook is a privilege granted at the sole discretion of Facebook, it's not a right. While I support free speech, it's completely at FB's discretion as to whether or not content is acceptable.
Also, this could help you: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope
Are videos where people actually get hurt[1], not just their feelings, also banned from Facebook? Or are those less serious?
I heave heard this claim that rape jokes somehow contribute to the prevalence of the problem. Is there any empirical proof for that?
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNuaaPoLu1Q&t=44s (unpleasant to watch)
Are you seriours, how would you even attempt to prove something like that?
Funny that everyone agrees that overtly racist/anti-semitic (and recently) homophobic images on social sites are wrong, but banning rape jokes is somehow taking things too far.
How do we measure whether access to pornography increases the number of sexual assaults? We rely on the natural experiments: measure the consumption of pornography in the area and correlate it with crime rates. For more reliable results, we look at changes in time, or control for other factors.
> images on social sites are wrong
I don't use Facebook and they can ban whatever they want. The more stuff they ban, the quicker will their grip on the web fade.
What I find weird is the disconnect from physical reality. Speech that makes people uncomfortable is banned but videos showing people being assaulted, hit with a plank are not? Or are they?
Many consider this case to be a prime example of excessive application of hate speech laws against speech that was clearly not "hateful".
It may not need to, but it decided to do so years ago. And when breastfeeding or breast cancer groups get blocked or partially censored, it's hard to understand why rape apology groups are allowed to remain.
I don't even have a Facebook account, but is this real? Do people join groups to defend their "right to rape"? That's beyond disgusting.
I imagine someone realized that people who would leave if sexual assault 'humor' was banned make them less than the advertisers who would leave were the jokes not banned.
It goes against human nature. People curse, people are horrible to each other, people make fun of terrible things... It's a fact of life. You can't cleanse the world of bad human behaviour. That's a fight you can't win. Facebook will try and censor their systems, people will hate it, and Facebook will die trying.
EDIT: I guess I'm being overly pessimistic here. Facebook has no choice but to do something. It just feels like:
"We have to do something." "This is something!" "Therefore we have to do it!"
That could stand if they didn't try to police their users at all, but they do, significantly, on a number of areas: facebook has banned or censored groups and images on such sujects as breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects[0]. Yet, and there's the rub, rape and violence groups were allowed to run unimpeded and reports were generally ignored when they didn't lead to the complainer being blocked.
[0] http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/11/does-facebook-hate-al...
In the article it says: "... Facebook says it will process more complaints and will train its staff of reviewers ...". That means they are doing a big part of the censoring MANUALLY! You will NEVER be able to remove garbage faster than people creating it.
Sure, but that's got nothing to do with the part I quoted: you asked why they can be "held accountable" (for extremely loose definitions of "held" and "accountable") for everything their users say, and the answer is: because they decided to police what their users say, once they start policing they're held accountable for what they police and how they police it.
> That means they are doing a big part of the censoring MANUALLY!
Yes?
> You will NEVER be able to remove garbage faster than people creating it.
You probably won't do it automatically either, at least not without significant collateral damages anyway (see: Google).
And as far as I know, Facebook mostly acts on reports (which happens to be the way HN works as well), they generally don't remove content preemptively.
Surely, government and law enforcement have been things to take care of than people being horrible without being violent.
It is good to see movement of the problem, although some for m of hellbanning of pages and profiles is a better solution.