On Wednesday, a controversial Facebook page called “Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted” was unpublished after the social media giant received a number of complaints from Christians who said the page violated Facebook's community standards, the Christian Post reported.
But shortly after being torn down, another page, “Virgin Mary STILL Should've Aborted,” went up in its place, Life News said.
“Tired of being pushed around by religious hypocrisy. We will get our page back,” the page says in its description.
The effort to remove the original page was spearheaded by a Facebook community called “Catholics & Protestants Against FB Religious Discrimination.”
The page says in its description that it exists to hold Facebook to its own rules and standards.
“Facebook allows Atheist extremists to create BLATANTLY offensive pages, we exist to remind Mark Zuckerberg and his company they need to follow their own guidelines,” the page added.
According to Christian Post, Cary Bogue, founder of Catholics & Protestants Against FB Religious Discrimination, said he is pleased Facebook unpublished the anti-Christian page.
“We want to extend our thanks to Facebook for its response, despite the tremendous pressure they must have felt from the LGBT/Atheist community,” he said. “We believe they responded appropriately. While it may have been a bitter pill to swallow, they stepped up and did the right thing and we will not take that credit away from them.”
In addition to having an offensive title, the page included sacrilegious pictures and engaged in anti-Christian hate speech in violation of Facebook's community standards, Bogue said.
“We're not trying to censor anyone, but this falls under the category of hate speech,” Bogue told Christian Post. “It's one thing to say we're atheists and we're proud of it…it's another thing to say his mother should have aborted him.”
Administrators of the old page claim they never promoted hate speech and are fighting Facebook's decision.
Bogue told the Christian News Service he believed Facebook used an automated agent to respond to complaints about the page, claiming it does not consider it an attack on a religion.
This complaint, however, is not uncommon.
Just last month, for example, Facebook came under fire for allowing some “Kill Zimmerman” pages to exist.
In June, Facebook defended a page that advocated beheading those who disrespect the Prophet Mohammed, saying it did not violate the site's community standards. The page was eventually torn down.
Last August, Facebook stood by a page that openly called for murdering GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for more than two weeks. That page was also taken down.
It has also been somewhat schizophrenic in enforcing its policies, having gone so far as to punish one user who thanked someone for liking a post while at the same time refusing to pull posts that clearly violate the rules.
Upset with what many call Facebook's “arbitrary and capricious” enforcement policies, over 14,000 people have signed up for a “Facebook Blackout” protest event to be held Aug. 25.
As of this writing, the replacement “Virgin Mary” page has just over 1,500 “likes,” and has been reported by over 225 people.
While I can understand why you find the title offensive, It looks like an average run-of-the-mill “let’s stop privileging religious beliefs” web-page to me. Clearly the provocative title has been effective at getting eyeballs onto screens.
I’m sure she is grateful for your help in that regard, btw.
I would refer you to this article about FB monitoring:
http://theinternetoffendsme.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/the-real-story-behind-facebook-moderation-and-your-petty-reports/
Oh, and let’s stop privileging religious beliefs shall we?