Facebook cracks down on Kiwi group ‘hate speech’
FACEBOOK has temporarily banned the accounts of several Kiwis because of hate speech.
Members of the Facebook group ‘‘Gypsy Scammers in NZ’’, which tracks the movements of the unruly British tourists who had been in New Zealand, have been banned for up to a month for using any iteration of the term gypsy in their posts.
The founder of the group with close to 5000 members is furious that she is being censored. ‘‘Gypsy – are you serious? There are much more derogatory words,’’ she said.
Facebook is accepting no spelling of the word, not in short form or with deleted letters. ‘‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. They are classing it as bloody hate speech . . . Facebook has gone too far.’’
She started the page on January 14 after someone suggested a Facebook page was needed. It had gone ‘‘mental’’ since then, she said.
The page has been used as a source of up-to-date information for many journalists – including from Sydney, Australia and the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, she said. She admitted the page’s name was inaccurate, but did not want to change the it because people wouldn’t be able to find it.
Facebook defines hate speech as language that attacks people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, disability. KELLY HODEL/STUFF
A spokesman said ‘‘gypsy’’ was derogatory. The politically correct term would be Romani people or Romani, he said.
It is also hate speech when labels are used to associate negative connotations to a whole community.
Facebook said this example was a reminder that seemingly commonplace terms can still be hate speech but page had not been shut down because no one had reported it, only the members’ comments.
AUT professor and free speech advocate Paul Moon said the affected group had the first say on whether a term was offensive.
‘‘Facebook might be infringing on freedom of speech, but that is its right, as a private organisation, to control whatever speech it won’t tolerate,’’ Moon said.