Facebook relents, takes down some pages promoting sexual violence

After facing flak for allowing pages which allegedly promote sexually violent behaviour, social networking website Facebook has taken down some of them.

Many individuals and organisations had protested against creation and existence of such user-created pages, which go under names like “Throwing eggs at sl**s, brick shaped eggs -- made from brick” and "Wiping makeup off your shoe after a long day of kicking sl**s in the face".

Citing freedom of expression as the reason, the website had initially been reluctant to deactivate these pages.

But with more and more users expressing open disapproval of such pages, Facebook relented to an extent (some of these pages still exist).

A signature campaign against such pages which many believe “condone rape” started by Change.org received the support of over 1.8 lakh people and became crucial in getting Facebook to take action against some of these pages.

Users and observers find the popularity of pages such as “kicking sl**s in the vagina because its [sic] funny watching your foot disappear"- measured in terms of the ‘likes’ and comments received by them- disturbing.