Facebook Refuses to Remove ‘Rape Pages’ Linked to Australian, British Youth
Anti-rape campaigners are raising a howl over Facebook's refusal to remove pages that glorify and make fun of rape and violence against women.
Canada-based Rape Is No Joke (RINJ) campaign co-founder Micheal O'Brien accused Facebook of ignoring the online petition by 200,000 people worldwide to remove the page
"You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway" because it is drawing huge traffic to Facebook, as the said page dubbed "alleyway" is the most popular among rape pages with more than 200,000 "likes."
Other rape pages are "Abducting, raping and violently murdering your friend as a joke", "Pinning your mate down while someone HIV positive rapes him for a laugh", "Police call it a restraining order, we call it playing hard to get" and "Turning into a chain smoking sexual predator when you drink."
RINJ claimed that the pages are maintained and supported by Australian college students and British teenage boys with links to the cyber-anarchists group 4chan.
Jane Osmond, co-editor of the Women's Views on News website, accused the said pages of making fun and jokes about rape.
"Those who post in this way are certainly mostly teenage boys and young men saying inappropriate things, but we do believe that these sites have attracted sexual predators too. It is a dangerous group with some dangerous users," said Osmond, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
O'Brien said the campaign is now focusing on Facebook advertisers telling them not to let their advertisements be posted on the "rape pages."