Facebook still thinks pedophiles are funny. So today I’m going to show you — and, more important, Facebook’s advertisers — some of the other nasty stuff the social-network giant allows to co-exist alongside your children’s profiles.
Readers of this column know that my gripe with Facebook started about two weeks ago when Mark Zuckerberg’s company refused to shut down a page on its site titled “Pedophiles are people too.”
Instead, Facebook allowed the person who posted the page to insert the phrase “Controversial Humour” in front of the title.
The pedophile page was still up and running on the Facebook site yesterday.
Facebook’s manager of public policy, a guy named Andrew Noyes (noyes@fb.com), said the pedophile page did not violate the company’s policies.
“In general, pages or groups devoted to jokes, even disgusting and distasteful ones do not violate our policies,” he said in an e-mail to me.
So Facebook and Mr. Noyes think that pedophilia — sex with children, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the sicker side of humanity — is funny.
Here’s what one reader had to say about that.
Dear Mr. Crudele: I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your articles going after both FB and its willing advertisers for not paying attention to the sick Web page that is on the FB site.
I have a different take on this whole thing as I was sexually abused from the time I was 8 to 10 years old. Without boring you with all of the details, I will tell you that it was and still is the most horrific experience anyone can ever imagine.
I kept the reader’s name off this note even though he told me I could use it. But how funny is that note? I bet Zuckenberg would wet his pants reading that bit of controversial humor.
I’ll get back to the pedophile page in a minute. But first I want to share with you some of the other crap that Zuckerberg and his humorists tolerate on their site.
There is the “Damn Jews!” page, which 14 people “liked.” Its one comment is “Nobody kills Jesus and gets away with it. JUST SAYIN!” One genius responding by superimposing Hitler’s face over Colonel Sanders pictures and added the initials KFJ for “Kentucky Fried Jews.”
Bigotry hidden behind supposed humor — Facebook must love that one, too.
There’s also a page that simply says “hate when your walking along and the wind blows your jew cap of your head.” I left in the spelling errors so you understand these people are not just anti-Semitic — they’re also morons.
Remember, your kids can get onto those pages just by typing in a few words.
There is also a slew of pages denying that the Holocaust ever happened and others claiming that “9/11 was done by the Jews and Illuminati’s.” Again, spelling errors.
I’m sure I missed hundreds of other pages that hate other groups, but I think you get the point.
To its credit, Facebook did close the “KillMittRomney” page. And the “Kill A Jew Day” page was also removed from the site.
The company does have standards, ya know.
I’m sure the Jewish community can handle Facebook better than I can, so I will leave that task to it. I’ll keep defending the children until Facebook gives a hoot about sponsoring a pedophile page, or at least, cares about losing advertisers because of it.
Just about every advertiser I contacted complained to Facebook about the pedophile page. MasterCard was one of the more recent ones, but it wouldn’t show me a copy of the letter it sent.
And Capitol Records complained that a picture used on the “Pedophile are people too” page came from one of its videos. The record company wouldn’t tell me Facebook’s response to that bit of copyright infringement because it was afraid of creating a fuss.
Facebook’s stock has been in steady decomposition since the initial public offering in May. It’s now going for half-off the IPO price, even after Zuckerberg promised yesterday not to sell any of his shares for a year.
The stock was hurt last week when several analysts lowered their forecasts for the company’s shares. As I told you in a previous column, if Wall Street gets wind of the fact that Facebook is losing advertisers, its shares will go down.
Will Facebook be a $5 stock? It could be if it continues to behave in an irresponsible manner. Publicly traded companies that rely on advertisers for all their revenue need to behave like solid corporate citizens and not like frat boys who think everything and anything is funny.
Here are some more of the companies that advertise on Facebook:
Samsung Mobile, Amazon, Zoosk, Weight Watchers, Just Fab, Sunglass Hut, AT&T, Topshop, Burt’s Bees, Budweiser, Walmart, Michael Kors, Red Bull, CNN, Sears, Miracle Surgery and Gerber.
Feel free to look them up and complain.
I’ll let someone going by the screen name of Erinmon, who commented yesterday on the “Pedophiles are people too” page, sum the situation up in the Internet lingo: “OMG dis page iz offensive plz delet it.”
Facebook should delete it — and monitor all the other offensive pages — or risk losing revenue.