Under pressure, Facebook targets sexist hate speech [x-post /r/censorship]

usaisbest · 2013-05-29T21:59:11+00:00

just in time for the Zimmerman trial ?

JustReward · 2013-05-29T22:03:41+00:00

The sexist hate speech they're referring to, as if there was any doubt, is speech directed at women. The categories under which the offensive speech are now identified has been defined, at least in part, by a group called Women, Action & the Media.

"It is because Facebook has committed to having policies to address these issues that we felt it was necessary to take these actions and press for that commitment to fully recognize how the real world safety gap experienced by women globally is dynamically related to our online lives," author Soraya Chemaly, who helped spearhead the effort, said in a post on the group's site.

The action was prompted by an open letter, which contains passages like the following:

Specifically, we call on you, Facebook, to take three actions:

Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.

Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.

Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The question of whether or not Facebook should engage in any kind of censorship aside, my question is how can a group like this convince themselves that they should go through the trouble of affecting social change and yet adopt a policy that is clearly in favor of the rights of only one gender?

The speech they wish to ban isn't hate speech, it's hate speech towards women. The group that they wish to protect is women. The group that will be the target of censorship is men, and men will also fail to benefit from a policy that is tailored to only improve the situation of women, not people of all genders.

(Though it's implicit to my argument, I believe it's easily defensible that all genders experience hateful speech on Facebook. "Fags," "throw rocks at boys," bullying and peer pressure, shaming of trans* people, etc.)

In my opinion this is why feminism should be rejected in favor of egalitarianism. The promotion of one gender's rights at the expense of the other's isn't equality, it's sexism.

Title	Under pressure, Facebook targets sexist hate speech [x-post /r/censorship]
Author	JustReward
Upvotes	1
Comments	2
Date	May 29, 2013 9:51 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1fanzb/under_pressure_facebook_targets_sexist_hate/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/under-pressure-facebook-targets-sexist-hate-speech.1172580 https://theredarchive.com/post/1172580

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