Facebook Cracks Down on Images of Domestic Violence

After more than a dozen companies pulled advertising on the social network following a boycott campaign, Facebook vowed to do a better job of policing domestic violence imagery on the network.

"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," Marne Levine, VP of Global Public Policy, wrote on Facebook's official blog. "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 In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria."

In response, Levine wrote that the company plans to review and update guidelines regarding hate speech on the network. Facebook plans to work with "legal experts and others, including representatives of the women's coalition and other groups that have historically faced discrimination," she wrote.

In addition, Facebook plans to update the training for teams that evaluate claims of hate speech and increase the accountability of the creators of "insensitive" content. A few months ago, the company initiated a policy in which authors of such offensive content were required to attach their authentic identity to it.

In her blog post, Levine stresses that while the often-hard-to-define hate speech is verboten on the social network, offensive speech is OK. "While there is no universally accepted definition of hate speech, as a platform we define the term to mean direct and serious attacks on any protected category of people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease," she wrote.

Levine's statement comes after a coalition of watchdog groups initiated a boycott of Facebook and charged that there was too much language and imagery on the site that glorified violence against women.

Examples of such content included a meme with a picture of a woman whose mouth was taped, surrounded by the caption: "Don't wrap it and tap it. Tape her and rape her." The group also called on advertisers to flee the social network and started the hashtag #FBRape to pressure Facebook. According to Think Progress, some 15 advertisers took part in the boycott, including Nationwide UK and Nissan UK.