Tuesday 8 January 2013

Well Done Facebook & Twitter!

[UPDATE MARCH 2014: We have completely revised our stance on Facebook - they are blatantly ignoring homophobic content, adding to the discrimination against gay people rather than preventing it. Their 'community standards' mean nothing.]

There has been a recent spate of campaigning via the SMUG forum regarding a particularly vicious site called Kampala Exposed: Rumors and Facts.

This article explains what the page was about and why it was so dangerous, systematically outing LGBT people: Kampala Exposed: Rumor, Facts and Plots.

This prompted a campaign which quickly resulted in first Twitter, and then Facebook, removing Exposed's presence on their sites: Facebook Takes Down Anti-Gay User Page Aimed At 'Outing' Ugandans.

Facebook removed an anti-gay page aimed at 'outing' Ugandans who were preceived - or rumored  - to be gay and could be persecuted under the law. The page, called "Kampala Exposed: Facts and Rumors," was brought to wider attention by a Change.org petition started by the LGBT organization Freedom and Roam Uganda...

Well done to both companies for that. Certainly more pro-active than Citibank & Barclays appear to have been.

However...


[UPDATE 9th January: Blogger have taken down the site! :)]

We noticed today that Blogger hasn't taken the site off air yet. Perhaps there needs to be greater communication between these three giants of Social Media when it comes to agreeing what constitutes 'unaceptable,' and coordinated efforts to remove offending items?  

All three sites have high standards of freedom of speech and expression, so if it's offensive enough for one to remove, it seems time consuming to have to approach the other two separately.

Today's blog post features a charming tirade against Mark Zuckerberg (as if he's going to be reading!) for (personally?) disabling the account. It goes on to tell him:

Well I am told you are gay yourself, maybe that's where the fascination comes from. 

Yes, people, the author of Kampala Exposed appears to be bat-sh!t crazy.

If you would like to express your concern for their mental health, or just sign them up for some online anger management courses, you can reach them at: kampalaexposed@gmail.com

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