Facebook is removing ads from offensive and illegal pages. Why not remove the illegal pages too?
Facebook gave in to pressure from advocacy groups and advertisers and announced it will no longer allow ads on sites that include controversial content. Although they’ve not said anything publicly, I’ve also noticed this change in policy also seems to be impacting Facebook pages promoting movie piracy. More on below, but first, from Facebook’s official statement released on June 28th:
Facebook is a place for people to connect and share. It’s also a place where businesses can connect and share content with the people who love their brands. Our goal is to both preserve the freedoms of sharing on Facebook but also protect people and brands from certain types of content.
We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action…
…For example, we will now seek to restrict ads from appearing next to Pages and Groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content (content that does not violate our community standards).
Facebook was forced to take this action after women’s groups like WAM (Women, Action & the Media) protested the “representation of rape and domestic violence” on Facebook. Their campaign to publicize the issue included highlighting advertisers whose ads could be found on the controversial pages and group sites. From their campaign:
To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site. (We will be raising awareness and contacting advertisers on Twitter using the hashtag #FBrape.)
Facebook’s decision to change its policies is clearly a step in the right direction, but as I alluded to earlier, it doesn’t seem to be the only ad-related move the social media giant has made. As I pointed out in blog posts earlier this spring “Facebook-A Link in the Piracy Food Chain” and “A ‘Fast and Furious’ Example of Online Piracy at Work” there are numerous Facebook pages, linking to pirated movies, that are deserving of scrutiny. While certainly not as disturbing as pages promoting violence against women, these pirate pages on Facebook openly engage in illegal behavior nonetheless.
After my blog posts, and possibly in conjunction with the negative publicity surrounding ads on misogynistic pages, it appears that Facebook has quietly removed advertising from the illegal movie pages I documented.
This page boasts more than 231k “likes.” When I wrote about last May the page featured ads, now there are none to be found.
It’s an excellent first step, but why not go a step further? Claiming these pages should be protected because they represent “free speech” is a tired false equivalency. Pirating movies isn’t about “free speech” it’s theft and is illegal. How can Facebook defend pirate pages that are in the business of profiting from theft? They can’t.
So, if Facebook screeners are set to review pages for suitability for advertising, why not review pages that are engaged in illegal activities like online piracy? If above pages promoted illegal prescription drugs instead of illegal movies it’s unlikely they’d be allowed to remain on Facebook.
Facebook needs to stop taking the disingenuous position that protecting free speech includes protecting criminal behavior. Now that Facebook has apparently seen fit to get rid of the ads on these pages, isn’t it time to get rid of the pages too?