Facebook Supports Hate Speech
While I understand the difficulties of trying to manage large scale platforms, I cannot give a pass to Facebooks horrible discrepancies in managing hate speech on their page. Recently I’ve made a few posts, calling out the bad behavior of my fellow men, by making the comment “Men are Trash” or “Men are Savages”.
While my comment was meant to be funny, in the case of “Men are Savages” I was discussing the tendency for some men to not wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Or thought provoking, in the case of “Men are Trash”, while addressing toxic masculinity and the harassment of women. What they aren’t, is hate speech. Men suffer from enormous privilege in our society, we are not a disenfranchised group, we are the group doing the disenfranchising.
Now Facebook is free to disagree with my definitions, but when they allow pages, that portray African Americans in horrible caricature, or make disparaging comments about other religions, they seem to find that speech to “not be against their community standards”.
Not against their community standards? What community are they talking about? The rich and diverse community of the US? One that thrives on different people, from different backgrounds and religions, contributing to society? One that Facebook utilizes to hire talent to do it’s programming.
No, they are talking about an “white men” only community. A misogynistic, bigoted community that supports the unbridled speech of hate mongers, while silencing the voices of marginalized groups, for profit.
What do we expect, from a company that hires someone like Joel Kaplan, who openly supports Russian activity on Facebook, and who also supports Brent Kavanaugh. Joel Kaplan is the Vice President for Global Public Policy at Facebook, and apparently their policy is to support misogyny and bigotry.
