Facebook Finally Removes Controversial Rape Joke Pages; But is That Enough?

Facebook has finally removed several controversial pages that have been heavily criticized for making jokes about rape.

The social networking giant has quietly taken down, among others, a page titled You know she's playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway.

More than 150,000 letters, apart from furious Twitter campaign and advertisers removal of their ads next to the pages forced Facebook to take down pages that graphically celebrated and encouraged rape and sexual violence.

There is no place on Facebook for content that is hateful, threatening, or incites violence, Facebook told BBC.

However, advocacy website Women's Views On News wants Facebook to do more.

Although its stated mission is to be a safe community where people can communicate and share ideas, it is marginalizing women and rape survivors by failing to come out against this type of content, the Web site said.

Global organizers have, therefore, put together a list of demands that Facebook needs to address in order to ensure that similar pages are taken down and new pages prevented from springing up:

Facebook should -

* Make a public statement that rape is never acceptable; that promoting sexual violence and violence against women is repugnant; that Facebook will remove content that advocates rape, sexual violence, and violence against women; and that the terms of service/community standards will be updated to specify this.

* Address in a public statement that the previous pub joke defense was poorly stated, explaining that alleging humor does not give a free pass to promote any hate content; that Facebook does not consider promoting violence against women or sexual assault to be a joke or funny; and that such content will be held to the same standard as any violence against any other group or individual.

* Be transparent about the content monitoring process; to state publicly if and how many pages are removed that promote sexual violence or violence against women; and to establish relationships with experts in sexual violence and violence against women who will help identify content that needs to be removed.

* Update its terms of service/community standards to specify that: Content earnestly promoting violence against women or sexual violence violates Facebook's terms of use and will accordingly be removed whenever reported. In addition to the internal reporting system, provide a public contact email for users to register complaints about content that violates the terms of service/community standards, that will acknowledge receipt and respond with a decision on whether or not to remove.