By The Whyman
I hope you have thick skin, Mr Zuckerberg, because there is a sizable campaign out to defame you - on your very own social media website.
Given that you have a high profile, it is expected to come with the territory that you'll be on the receiving end of a number of unjustifiable attacks. And for that reason (amongst many others) some reading will completely (and deliberately) miss the points that I am making by writing this. But being a high profile character is no excuse whatsoever to be misrepresented and attacked in such a manner as I and many thousands of others have observed.
However, of course, I am not talking about pages which occasionally grumble about unwanted or misunderstood changes to Facebook. I am not even speaking of those who convey their strongly held disagreements with you and your policies via satirical means. People are still by and large entitled to exercise their freedom of speech whether it be factual or not.
What I am referring to is an open, unwarranted and deliberately cruel and inhumane attack on you, your character and everything you believe and stand for on a personal level and they are flaunting it on your site in the belief that you will do nothing about it in spite of your stand against such behavior.
There is a semi-organised yet exponentially growing and influential network of people who not only disagree with you - they hate and utterly loathe you and will not hold back from proselytizing that sentiment. In fact, that is the stated purpose of many of these pages in their 'about' section or even as the title of their pages themselves! From the pedestrian 'I hate Mark Zuckerburg' to the more colourful 'Mark Zuckerburg, son of a slut should be raped and die' these pages only exist to bring misery to you and those who care about you. I am confident that you would agree that such pages are not covered under 'freedom of speech' and as such have no place here.
I realise that the above are bad enough, but sadly, it gets much, much, much worse - many going into sordid and pornographic detail.
Furthermore, I regret to inform you (if you weren't already aware) that many hundreds if not many thousands are not content in creating vile communities of libelous and deceitful defamatory debauchery. They are targeting your friends and family. These same people have gone out of their way to learn who likes your page and 'troll' them. Of course in the past, it was a simple matter to block them, but now they are exploiting a simple yet gaping loophole in your attempts to eliminate hate speech: the 'like' system.
As long as they do not post anything, they can create the most horrific names and display them for all to see without fear of repercussion with a single click of a mouse...and they often do it to each and every post on a page.
By now, many readers must be wondering how this could be, considering all the time and effort you and your team have put into your 'reporting' system in recent history. Again, I regret to inform you that a good number of those whom you have employed to handle these reports don't do their job - at least consistently:
Even when a page unequivocally states that its very purpose is to "hate" and malign Mark Zuckerburg and its content reflects this in no uncertain terms - if and when reported, this isn't always considered "hate speech", according to the official Facebook feedback.
Even when a page is explicitly pornographic, detailing lewd and perverse sexual situations that they imagine doing to Mark Zuckerburg - if and when reported, this isn't considered pornographic according to the official Facebook feedback.
Even when threats of violence or even death against Mark Zuckerburg or your followers are displayed textually or graphically as the very theme of their page – this, too, for an inexplicable reason is not considered to be a violation of the Facebook terms of service.
For that matter, the question is begged why a page entitled "Mark Zuckerburg should have been aborted with a rusty clothes hanger" does not register as being an example of abusive spam when it 'likes' every post on a page called 'The Mark Zuckerburg Appreciation Society"?
For some who have read this far, this is news for them and simply won't believe that this is true. After all, this kind of deviant, anti-social behaviour is clearly antithetical to the purpose of Facebook and as such would never, ever be allowed - especially to someone who is respected as much as Mark Zuckerberg on his own website. To those, I would respond: do a Facebook search for yourselves - if you can stomach the content - even a simple investigation will yield many more than you would have imagined and they have been active and spreading like a malignant tumor for a number of years without concern of being shut down.
One last caveat however: when you search for these flagrant hate pages which are clearly in violation of the Facebook Terms of Service - change Mark Zuckerburg to Jesus Christ.