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ADVOCACY TO REMOVE MEDIA
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE TEXT IS NOT ABOUT CENSORSHIP
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Garcia Ramilo - 13 June 2013
On May 21
more than a hundred organisations lead by Women,
Action & the Media, the journalist Soraya Chemaly, and The Everyday Sexism Project started a
campaign to Take
action to end gender-based violence on Facebook. Within a week, Facebook
accepted weaknesses and lapses in implementing their policies and their own
community standards and committed to take steps to improve their content policy
in identifying and removal of gender-based violent content on their platform.
The APC’s
Women’s Rights Programme and the Take Back the Tech! campaign celebrated this
unprecented success along with other signatories and supporters of the Open
letter to Facebook.
The
“but” factor
But not all
advocates of freedom on expression online celebrated with us. In an article
published on May 30, Jillian York, a director of International Freedom of
Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF)
contends that Facebook should not be in the business of censoring content even
if it is hate speech.
This is not
a new debate. It is a debate that feminists, who care deeply about freedom of
expression, have faced around issues of misogyny and gender-based violent
content. What is new is how these arguments play out online. What is crystal
clear to those of us who are backing this campaign is that this is not a call
to counter the right of users to free expression. The network of women’s
organisations behind this action understand that internet freedoms are critical
to asserting women’s rights and are staunch advocates of freedom of expression
online and offline.
But even
this right is not absolute – it is subject to other rights and laws as the
Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression Frank La Rue identifies in his
report:
“Indeed,
the Internet has become a key means by which individuals can exercise their
right to freedom of opinion and expression, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights.
The
latter provides that:
(a) Everyone shall have the
right to hold opinions without interference;
(b) Everyone shall have the
right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers,
either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other
media of his choice;
c) The e be subject to
certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and
are necessary:
(d) for respect of the
rights or reputations of others;
(e) for the protection of
national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or
morals.” (1)
What are
provided for with respect to gender-based hate speech in laws? York asserts
that while most of the speech flagged by the campaign is “abhorrent and
offensive”, these are already protected by law. On the contrary, part of the
problem is that gender-based hate speech is typically not included in
definitions of and legislation on hate speech. Here’s a Facebook example cited
in an Australian legal journal:
“Another
relatively recent example of conduct that might be said to involve vilification
on the basis of gender was a Facebook page set up by some University of Sydney
students entitled ‘Define Statutory’ and defined as ‘pro-rape’. The page,
subsequently removed from Facebook, was variously described as ‘inciting people
to sexual violence’ and ‘grooming perpetrators of sexual violence’. This would
appear to satisfy all the requirements of hate speech, yet because of the
absence of gender as a specified ground in the vilification provisions, could
not, as the law currently stands, be prosecuted in any Australian jurisdiction.”
(2)
The author
examined the absence of legal regulation of gendered hate speech in Australia
and argues that to address the problem of gendered hate speech, we need to
identify what it is. This is precisely what the campaign has done – identified gender-based
violent content on Facebook pages and called attention to the company’s
inconsistencies in adhering to its own policies and community standards.
Many,
including York, liken Facebook to a new town square or a public space. I
disagree. Facebook is not a public plaza. It is a defined online platform with
set rules for membership, community standards, and more. It is a business
entity and accountable to its board and laws where it operates its businesses.
Ultimately, it is Facebook who must decide its human rights policies including
standards about acceptability of misogynist and gender-based hate speech on its
online platform, in the same way that a workplace or any company has standards
about sexist behaviour. If a company says “we do not tolerate misogynist speech
in our platform,” are we going to protest and say “this is censorship” or are
we going to say that they are contributing to changing the culture of misogyny
and sexism?
Where’s
the real danger?
York fears
that the campaign sets a dangerous precedent for other ‘special interest groups
looking to get their pet issues censored’. However, Facebook has rules and
community standards of its own and it regulates content. But their practice
does not match their rethoric or their standards. They need to implement
better, they need to improve their systems and they need to consult their
users.
So, how does
the campaign become a dangerous precedent? If other interest groups decide to
raise their “pet issues,”
isn’t this part of their freedom as Facebook users?
What is
dangerous is allowing Facebook to continue to decide on its own and not
speaking out against what York herself labels as “abhorrent, awful and
offensive”. The campaign bravely took on Facebook by saying that: Gender-based
hate speech is unacceptable, and we do not want it on a platform that we use.
Some users disagreed with this position. Some advertisers pulled their ads from
Facebook, while others stayed. The fact is the campaign started a serious
debate on misogyny, violence against women and freedom of expression. So rather
than simply raise ‘censorship’ as a red herring and dismiss this campaign as
futile, it would be far more useful if freedom of expression advocates and
experts offer alternatives and solutions that lead to standards that respect
women’s rights and freedom of expression at the same time.