Facebook to separate hate, free speech following protest

London: In response to protests and campaigns carried out by advocacy groups and advertisers, social media site Facebook has agreed to revise its content policies.

Campaigns by the US-based Women, Action and Media, and the Everyday Sexism Project, a UK based Twitter feed, have demanded the removal of supposedly humorous content endorsing rape and domestic violence. Protests arose when photographs endorsing rape and domestic violence circulated on the social media site. The content included a photograph of the singer Rihanna`s bloodied and beaten face, captioned with `Chris Brown`s Greatest Hits` referring to an assault by the singer`s ex-boyfriend. Another photograph showed a woman in a pool of blood captioned ` I like her for her brains` The protest gained momentum when tens of thousands of tweets and emails using the hash tag #Fbrape were sent to the social network`s advertisers. Earlier, Facebook denied the complaints citing freedom of speech, saying that people posting distasteful or vulgar content does not infringe the company`s policies.