Must not mock or disparage women

Facebook has promised to review how it handles gender-based hate speech. The social networking giant made the promise after several feminist groups called the company out.

One group, Women, Action and the Media, published a letter that asks Facebook to take three actions: Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that the company will not tolerate this content; effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech; and effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

"In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence," the open letter said. "We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue, to bring your policy on rape and domestic violence into line with your own moderation goals and guidelines."

Facebook Admits Shortcomings

Marne Levine, vice president of Global Public Policy at Facebook, responded in a blog post. Levine pointed out that Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities prohibits hate speech -- but also admitted that there are instances of offensive content, including distasteful humor, that are not hate speech according to its definition.

"In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate," Levine said.

"In some cases, content is not being removed as quickly as we want. In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria....We need to do better -- and we will."

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