Larry Magid: Facebook Addresses Violence Against Women
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — More than a dozen advertisers were pulling out of Facebook following a campaign that criticized the social media site of allowing pages that promote violence against women.
Women, Action, and the Media launched the campaign last week saying the content included graphic images of abuse and mottos that encouraged rape.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg addressed the issue at the All Things D (D-11) conference in Southern California.
On Tuesday, Facebook VP of Global Public Policy Marnie Levine put out a blog post responding to these protests and had come to an agreement with the protesters. She basically came to an agreement with the protesters.
Levine said Facebook is going to do things differently and that they had already taken down the images that had been reported to the, but that they are going to review their guidelines and be stricter about the types of things that they allow.
Tech Report: Facebook Addresses Violence Against Women
She also said that they're removing the ability to post these types of things anonymously, so that if you do comment you have to put down your name and sex. In the future if you do post, your Facebook user name will be associated with it. Sandberg said that alone will cut back on a lot of it.
I was on the phone with one of the leaders of this campaign and she had sent me some examples that were pretty disgusting. But the question is: are they protected speech? They are legal and don't violate any laws, but some would argue that Facebook has a responsibility to monitor what's on its pages.
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