Pressure from women groups and the media have managed to make Facebook change its policy toward hate speech provoking violence against women and other groups. Women Action Media (WAM) had written an open letter to Facebook to take swift action on addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook, and asked users to to spot their own images, and post them on Twitter under the hashtag #fbrape. They had also tweeted to advertisers using the same hashtag like this: & @zappos @micheinnz @mmasammich how do you feel about your ad appearing on this #FBrape pg? Will you pull ads? twitter.com/MMASammich/sta… — Erica (@sugarandbrine) May 26, 2013 #FBrape: Bar Facebook posts that show violence against women rplr.co/12naGNJ twitter.com/rapplerdotcom/… — Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) June 1, 2013 RT @dove: @everydaysexism We're aggressively working with Facebook to resolve this issue. #FBRape — Miss Representation (@RepresentPledge) May 24, 2013 There has been persistent demand to address the representation of rape and domestic violence against women for months now but the final nail in the coffin was this open letter which not only addressed Facebook but also requested advertisers to stop advertising on Facebook. It seems when 15 of Facebook advertisers decided to stop advertising, Facebook decided to change its policy toward sexual assault. According to Facebook's statement, the company plans to review and update the guidelines used to evaluate reports of violations of their Community Standards around hate speech, training their teams on the changed guidelines, work with legal experts and representatives of women's coalition, among others.…
