With the suicides of several young people due to anti-gay bullying firmly in the public eye, GLAAD announced today that they are working with Facebook to prevent anti-gay sentiments on the hugely popular social networking site.
In a message to GLAAD, Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes said:
“Educating people about the lasting and damaging impacts of ignorant and hateful comments is a responsibility shared by parents, educators, organizations like GLAAD, and services like Facebook. We take our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities very seriously and react quickly to reports of inappropriate content and behavior. The goal of these policies is to strike a very delicate balance between giving people the freedom to express their opinions and viewpoints–even those that may be controversial to some–and maintaining a safe and trusted environment.”
Facebook’s renewed emphasis on keeping an eye on the homophobes seems to have been spurred on in part by anti-gay sentiments left on a Facebook page memorializing the recent bullying victims. What do you think? Is the social media giant just paying lip service or are they doing their part?
– J. Harvey
i took part in reporting over 100 hate comments left on the page they are talking about here …..it was sickening
from nazi anti gay photos , iran gay hangings and the suicidal teens pictures mutilated ……………sometimes i just wanna make it to a private island with only gay guys , not to say were perfect and not full of hate, but atleast we realize everyone deserves a fulfilling life
I think it’s just lip service. On a fan page for the winners of last season’s Amazing Race there we abusive anti-gay comments that facebook did not remove.
At least CBS reacted they pulled the comment forum from their website.
LIP SERVICE! I have been one of the people who pushed this and as of 4:39 p.m. EST, OCT. 13, IT IS STILL HAPPENING VERY RAPIDLY. SNUFF PICS, HATE SPEECH GALORE.
It is saddening that there are people in this world that are so full of hate that they feel the need to deface a memorial, whether it be a cyber-memorial or a physical one.
I am impressed that Facebook has partnered with GLAAD as it shows that they care.
People must understand that it will take time for Facebook to get the hate messages cleaned up. It’s not something that will happen over night so have patience.
All websites should’ve been doing this years ago.
Say whatever you want, but in my eyes they don’t need to do anything about the anti-gay comments. We live in the land of the free, people. If you don’t like someone’s view point, move the fuck on. No organization should tell a company or service what they should do. Kudos to Facebook (no I’m not a member) for saying they are taking a stand against the comments, but they don’t need to. Its only their own private rules and regulations within the company that have stated they can “censor” things like that.
Bottom line…people need to grow up and stop trying to manipulate every little thing that doesn’t agree or sync with their feelings/beliefs.
[/end rant]
theyre swimming so far in the deep end that their finding liparids
Perhaps it’s something this blog could adopt too. There is some vicious hate speech and bullying going on in almost every blog post so we can’t say that it’s just the str8 people doing it. It’s one thing to express your opinion and another to make it a personal attack on someone for not agreeing with your personal view. I hope that Facebook stands behind their words with actions otherwise it’s just words. The catch is that deciding when it’s hate speech becomes a very subjective thing and heaven knows that lawsuits are (saddly) soon to follow if they do take action. Ugh, so sad. The bottom line is, just like with Perez, we have to each look at our own actions and monitor them but sometimes we need someone to just point at our stuff and say “HEY! The bully is YOU.”
@Michael
I can’t agree with you more than you have said. Manhunt need to clean the hate comments here too. It is very disgusting to read some of the comments in this blog.
blogs are like a ronco rotisserie, set it and forget it