Facebook is in the midst of a PR crisis as brands including Nationwide and Nissan's UK divisions pull advertising over its policy towards photos glorifying rape and domestic violence.
See the banned images here (warning: they are disturbing) >
Following a petition launched by Women, Action, & the Media (WAM), the Everyday Sexism Project, and writer Soraya Chemaly, 15 advertisers took the open letter's advice to pull advertising until Facebook takes action against "gender-based hate speech" on the social network seriously.
Thousands of tweets later, Facebook changed its policy.
The pictures often feature meme-like phrases attempting humor such as: "Don't wrap it and tap it, Tape her and rape her."
Facebook has long allowed content endorsing violence against women. They claim that these pages fall under the “humor” part of their guidelines, or are expressions of “free speech.” But Facebook has proven willing to crack down on other forms of hate speech, including anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and homophobic speech, without claiming such exemptions.
More than 50,00 tweets were sent out using the movements adopted hashtag #FBRape just this month, many of which are aimed at advertisers' handles.
Dove, which prides itself in promoting healthy female body images and even created a tool that lets women change Facebook ads about love handles to self-esteem boosting messages, has received a lot of backlash for not pulling its ads on the brand's own Facebook page. Dove recently tweeted that it is now "aggressively working with Facebook to resolve the issue."
Other advertisers were more dismissive of the claims. Procter & Gamble said, "We can’t control what content they [our advertising] pops up next to. Obviously it’s a shame that our ad happened to pop up next to it."
When ThinkProgress contacted Facebook about images for groups like "Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus" and "Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs," a spokesperson said:
As you may expect in any diverse community of more than a billion people, we occasionally see people post distasteful or disturbing content, or make crude attempts at humor... While it may be vulgar and offensive, distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies. We do require that any such page be clearly marked — so users are aware that the content may be in poor taste.
Facebook has since responded to the #FBRape campaign on its newsroom site. It removed all the offensive images activists have pointed to on Twitter, but "Over a billion people use Facebook and add millions of updates and photos every day to our service." Facebook encouraged users to keep on flagging offensive photos.
We collected some of the images that triggered the campaign. Warning: some of them are graphic and disturbing.
Ads from major advertisers like Dove and Amazon were randomly placed next to images encouraging violence against women.
Here's an ad for Sky (lower right corner).
Hugo Boss, Magnum ice cream and Iams appeared next to this.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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