Social Media safe spaces infiltrated by Hate groups
How hate groups are undermining social media safe(r) spaces for LGBTQ community and POC.
Social Media networks such as Facebook, are crucial components to social justice movements like the BlackLivesMatter movement or the MeToo movement. They provide a means of a ‘safe space’ by allowing users from all communities to connect with like-minded individuals who might share similar experiences. LGBTQ communities and POC often use social justice movements on social media as a way to communicate within their communities safely. As social justice movements gain popularity on various social media networks such as Facebook, discrimination and bigotry seem to be very prominent on the network and nothing seems to be done about it. As the number of people who abuse social justice movements continues to grow, there should be rules and policies put into place to mitigate hate targeted towards the LGBTQ community and people of colour on social media. Hate groups can target people of colour and the LGBTQ community by using social media to infiltrate safe spaces. To explain, hate groups essentially abuse other users on social media by using racial and derogatory slurs to hurt others. Many social media apps have had to change their exclusionary policies, while other networks like Facebook don’t change them as they’re gaining profit from them. As the rate of hate groups infiltrating social media safe spaces goes up, social media networks, such as Facebook, claim they are trying to eliminate discrimination and hate groups from the app. However, during the process, many LGBTQ voices are silenced because they are misunderstood as hate groups. This allows for more problematic individuals to join hate groups to undermine safe spaces for the LGBTQ community and people of colour. Contrary to popular belief social media is used to infiltrate safe spaces for the LGBTQ community and POC, and it’s exemplified in the following cases: Police officers trading racist memes, conspiracy theories, and islamophobia on Facebook (Carless, 2019); Social media networks silencing LGBT voices (Lang, 2017); Facebook gains money in ad revenue from Anti-LGBTQ ads (Duffy, 2019).
Members of hate groups can be anybody in the general public. Police officers are using Facebook to trade racist memes, conspiracy theories, and Islamophobia (Carless, 2019). A Reveal News article shares the shocking news that active-duty and retired police officers from all levels of American police enforcement are making racist Facebook groups to share discriminative and oppressive thoughts. For example, numerous police officers have joined groups on Facebook such as “The White Privilege Club” and “DEATH TO ISLAM UNDERCOVER” (Carless, 2019). More than 50 departments launched investigations on these officers. After the evidence has been revealed, some departments have taken actions with one officer being fired for violating department policies (Carless, 2019). Lonnie Allen Brown is a part of the Kingsville Police Department in Texas and is also a member of three different Islamophobia Facebook groups. He shared a post of the religion Islam with the caption “Islam: A cult of oppression, rape, pedophilia, and murder cannot be reasoned with” (Carless,2019). Another post of a young black male with a pistol pointing to his head with the caption saying “If black lives really mattered… They’d stop shooting each other!” (Carless, 2019). William Weisenberger a sheriff deputy in Madison County, Mississippi, was a part of the Facebook group called “White Lives Matter”, Weisenberger was also in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against his department for engaging in decades of systemic discriminative and racist policing. At the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, racism was so systemic that black arrest forms already had the words “Black” and “Male” filled in (Carless, 2019). Numerous police officers that have been found in multiple hate groups on Facebook haven’t been banned or censored on the app, which Facebook and certain police officers found still haven’t commented on. Police officers remain to get away with discriminative and racist Facebook posts. While Facebook has put policies in effect to end these posts, it has only ironically hurt and silenced the marginalized community more than before.
Members apart of the LGBTQ community are being banned on social media networks such as Facebook for being misunderstood as hate. Meanwhile, actual hate groups spread their hate on social media networks with no repercussions. (Lang, 2017). Lisa Vogel, a user on Facebook claims she was banned from Facebook for using the word “Dyke” too much during gay pride month (Lang, 2017). Facebook has been silencing LGBTQ voices for misinterpreting the language they use within their communities as hate speech. In reality, the community is taking back words that were once homophobic slurs for their own to spread positivity. Facebook is trying to take discrimination and hate groups out of their app, but while they’re trying to do that, they’re censoring the wrong people. Christopher Rathbun, another Facebook used reported someone commenting the slur “fag” under an Instagram image on marriage equality in Minnesota but was told that person didn’t violate any of the company’s community standards on hate speech (Lang, 2017). Facebook like many other online networks uses an algorithm that relies on AI (ratifiable intelligence) to decide whether or not to take down a post that violates their terms. As a result, social media networks such as Facebook lack the basic understanding of what a homophobic post looks like and continues to silence the positive LGBTQ voices from the community. In doing so, it allows hate groups to remain at large and infiltrate safe spaces for the LGBTQ community.
Another problematic choice made by the networks team is the fact that Facebook has been paid thousands of dollars to promote anti-LGBTQ ads (Duffy, 2019). Surprisingly this doesn’t violate any of Facebook’s community guidelines. Though members from the LGBTQ community are blocked/suspended on Facebook daily for violating their community guidelines. A Pink News article explains Facebook’s Ad revenue from the past year, and it has been reported that Facebook has gained over 500,000 dollars from hate groups disguised as associations (Duffy, 2019). For instance, the FRC Action (Family Research Council Action) has paid them $107,000 to promote and display their anti-LGBT ads on user’s Facebook feeds (Duffy, 2019). One ad paid for from the FRC Action was a video of an older man dressed as an “ultimate social justice warrior” in a gender-fluid outfit, yelling and tackling conservatives shouting, “this is a safe space” (Duffy,2019). Facebook still gains from anti-LGBTQ ads yearly and has still yet to address why they have not changed anything about it. As Facebook continues to allow hate groups to share homophobic images and videos, they continue to silence many LGBTQ ads and voices from the community.
As a result of social media networks claiming to have an intolerance for hate groups and discrimination, they’re silencing positive members of the LGBTQ community, which promotes hate to continue to be present on their network and is an occurring problem. As members of hate groups continue to grow, social media networks such as Facebook remain to have a lack of understanding of who and what is hateful. This causes many positive people on the network from different communities such as the LGBTQ community to be silenced and banned for being misunderstood.
To conclude, social media networks need to take different measures to better their understandings of hate groups and to better their community standards on hate speech on their app to stop silencing positive voices from all communities and end further discrimination and bigotry. By allowing hate groups to pay large corporate social media such as Facebook to display racist, Anti-LGBTQ ads, they continue to demonstrate that racism and oppression are still very much present and tolerated in today’s society. In doing so, they are not only hurting the users on their platform, but they are also hurting the entire platform as well as the community. All in all, social media networks need to acknowledge that not everyone has the same beliefs and to promote equality throughout.
