According to Facebook their user terms and conditions are very clear for being eligible to open a Facebook page, firstly the person must be over 13 years of age, and then to protect all users they stipulate in their ‘safety’ section:

Safety
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:
7. You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
10. You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.

Could it be that in the name of profit Facebook is turning a blind eye to their own terms and conditions by refusing to take down pages which are dedicated to rape and violence?

Allowing individuals to connect with each other and encourage each other on Facebook in this way serves only to further normalise rape culture and the high instance of sexual violence that exists in society today.

Many of these rape pages are run by young people who share a common interest of rape, aggression, pornography and sexual violence. They can all connect on Facebook and it seems that for their pleasure and entertainment they ‘share’ their common interests by way of comments or jokes about acts of sexual violence.

Be they in the UK, America or here in Australia. Many are still at school, judging from information on their own Facebook profile pages (some are clearly under the age of 13 years). In amongst this community of young people no doubt will also be the sinister presence of perverts, paedophiles and rapists who will be encouraging their ‘friends’ of the rape page.

What amuses and interests them? Here is an example of some of the comments they post:
“We should rape all the feminists that post pictures”
“What’s black and blue and hides in the corner? A rape victim”
“I’m pro rape. As in, really good at it”
“If your tie her up and gag her, she can’t run or say no”
“I joined this page to support rape”
“Only I can rape my mum”
“I love raping bitches out in the cool night air, don’t complain sluts or your next”*

There are groups that have formed to try and pressure Facebook into taking down these pages. They include Rape is No Joke (RINJ) which was started by Michael O’Brien, a Canadian computer systems engineer. Despite an online petition signed by more than 200,000 people wordwide, the pages remain.

Facebook however defends its decision to allow these pages by saying that “It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive, another can find entertaining,” a spokesman for Facebook said. “Just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.”

So how does Facebook make money from these pages? Taking into account that 100,000’s of people worldwide visit these pages on a regular basis. Well it is all down to the adverts which appear at the right hand side of a Facebook page. Sponsors have paid for these advertisements, however many are unaware that their brand and logo is being advertised on such pages.

Some major companies that advertise on Facebook were understandably outraged when they realised their adverts were appearing on a ‘rape page’ and demanded that they be removed. They included Barclays, 02, John Lewis, Sony, BlackBerry, American Express, Groupon, Heinz, National Lottery, the White Company and PepsiCo.

Facebook does have a “whitelist” of pages where adverts are not displayed, but many of these pages are not on that list.

In the UK a journalists Alison Clarke and Jane Osmond run a website called Women’s Views on News, and along with RINJ they have been running an online campaign to pressure Facebook into taking down the pages.

Jane Osmond told The Telegraph that “It’s ludicrous to compare the content on this page to pub humour. Rape is a crime and we live in a society where the threat of rape is in the mind of every woman who has walked down a street alone at night. Making a joke about rape is not just not funny. It allows people to dismiss it as something not serious.”

“Those who post in this way are certainly mostly teenage boys and young men saying inappropriate things, but we do believe that these sites have attracted sexual predators too. It is a dangerous group with some dangerous users.”

She concluded that “Facebook will only listen to money, so we are now targeting the advertisers who have appeared on their pages.”

*Rape is No Joke (RINJ)

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.
Source: The Sunday Telegraph, London. The Sydney Morning Herald. Womens View on News. Rape Is No Joke