#fbrape

The second African Internet Governance Forum started in Nairobi, Kenya just a day after a terrorist attack was launched on this African country. The media reported 24 hours a day from the site of the attack; Twitter hashtags were created to make sure messages related to the crisis were passed on to the masses; and Facebook ready-to-use pictures of support to Kenya were circulated. It was actually…

Digital feminist activists have been following closely a campaign to demand clearer and more effective Twitter policies on sexually violent tweets. A number of activists have consistently brought this issue forward following alarming attacks and threats, most recently with Caroline Criado-Perez whose successful campaign to get a woman’s face on British bank notes brought about a wave of violent…

I was at BlogHer'13 this year, for those who don't know, BlogHer is one of the largest gathering of women bloggers in North America. Apart from being one of panelists for International Activists, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of keynote speakers in person, not limited to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. The reason I decided to talk about Sheryl as she…

Last month a coalition of women's organisations led a campaign to hold Facebook accountable for its content policy. In particular, how it deals with hateful speech and representations of gender-based violence shared by its users. In response, freedom of expression advocates have expressed concern and criticism over the precedent set by demands for Facebook to remove hateful content from its site…

On May 21 more than a hundred organisations lead by "Women, Action…

Sexist, gender-based violent speech is a norm today. Sign in, check your home page and somewhere on that or over the timeline you’ll be linked to a page or a photo which only serves to demean the existence of woman. What’s worse is finding some of your friends making jokes about it. But should that be a norm too? Finding your friends making rape and other gender-based jokes? No, it’s NOT funny!…

The campaign “Take action to end gender-based violence on Facebook” has re-opened up debate among internet rights advocates about the right to freedom of expression and responsibilities of internet intermediaries in regarding the content that circulates through their services. Margarita Salas, who is currently doing research consultancy of internet intermediaries corporate policies for APC's…

“Take action to end gender-based violence on Facebook” is this campaign’s call that asks companies whose publicity appears on explicitly violent Facebook pages and profiles to help pressure the social networking platform to re-examine its response to violence against women and girls.