A woman has spoken of her shock at being hit with a whopping month-long ban from Facebook after she wrote "men are trash tho" on the social networking platform.
Georgina Hollifield, a student from Stockton-on-Tees, said that she posted the comment in mid-May as a joke between herself and a friend but was bewildered to find herself ousted from the platform the next morning.
She said: “I went to use my account when I woke up the next morning and it said I had broken community guidelines by promoting hate, and that my comment had been removed. I have no idea who reported me.”
After initially being told the ban would last 24 hours, the 22-year-old explained how this then increased to 30 days when she tried to access her account the next day.
“I was really angry about Facebook’s response,” she said. “I had a post go viral once where hundreds of men who disagreed with my feminist position were saying they wanted to rape me and hoped I would be raped and other things which were clearly sexist hate speech and quite intimidating.”
“I reported it to Facebook but apparently none of them had broken community guidelines. For me to then be accused of inciting hate speech against men for something which was harmless and very clearly a joke - and to be banned for an entire month - is ridiculous.”
Georgina — who has never been banned from Facebook before — was finally allowed to return to the site this week after serving her 30-day suspension, but says she knows of many other women who have faced similar bans in the past.
According to Facebook's community standards guidelines, the platform removes hate speech, including content that directly attacks people on their sex, gender or gender identity, but states that they "allow humour, satire or social commentary related to these topics".
The move comes at a time of mounting criticism against the perceived failure of social media platforms - including Facebook - to tackle extremist content online.
Facebook have yet to respond to a request for comment.
Share This Article
