F— Off We’re Facebook

Statement of Rights and Responsibilities
Date of Last Revision: August 28, 2009

3. Safety

7. You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
10. You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.

Facebook urged to switch off hate sites
Alex McClintock
[Fairfax]
January 24, 2010

Facebook sites inciting anti-Indian sentiment continue to flourish despite protests from Indians in Australia.

[Tiny] Groups such as I think Indian People Should Wear Deodorant, Stop Whinging Indians, and Australia: Indians, You Have a Right to Leave[?], have not been removed.

Gautam Gupta, secretary of the Federation of Indian Students, said: “These sites must be shut down but, on the other hand, we must keep track of these hate groups being formed. They can be online or offline. When they’re offline we call them gangs. These are essentially online gangs.”

[See also : Uni not worried by decline in Indian students, Nick McLaren, ABC, January 22, 2010: University of Wollongong “manager of international recruitment, Peter Day, says the decline that is already being experienced will be offset by students from other countries”.]

More than half a dozen Australian groups that are specifically anti-Indian are still active on Facebook. On top of that, there are many broadly racist groups, including F— Off – We’re Full [/Fuck Off We’re Full], which has 54,000 members and is growing at a rate of about 2000 people a week.

“I don’t think it’s just a Facebook problem – it’s a social problem, a problem in the society,” Mr Gupta said.

Speak English or Piss Off!!! recently posted a note stating: “We are actually winning the battle with Facebook to keep this page up and running.”

[“HAPPY NEW YEAR! hope every one is safe and had fun. After much time we are actually winning the battle with facebook to keep this page up and running, which is why it[‘]s been almost a month between posts. A full email will be posted when all is settled, but in the mean time SPEAK ENGLISH!!!” January 1 at 4:32am. NB. Shane, Emmanuel, Sam and 307 others like this.]

Darrin Hodges, administrator of the group F— Off – We’re Full, was unapologetic and said Facebook was inconsistent in the way it dealt with groups.

“Our group has been shut down five times and defaced by internet trolls,” he said.

[Inter alia, Hodges is currently the spokesperson for the Australian Protectionist Party in NSW and a member of the Humanist Society of NSW; he is a former member of the Australia First Party and ‘white nationalist’/white supremacist website Stormfront. His anti-Semitism has been supplanted by Islamophobia.]

Alex Gollan, who set up the Facebook group Australians Against Racism & Discrimination, said it was not in Facebook’s interest to close racist pages that hosted advertising.

“Racism on Facebook is an overwhelming problem and it is massively out of control,” he said.

Darlene Ford, who teaches Indian students at Adelaide’s Cambridge College, said she followed Facebook procedure for reporting a group. She said she was frustrated by Facebook’s lack of action.

This month anti-racism groups and school principals condemned students from elite Melbourne private schools who joined the group Mate, Speak English, You’re in Australia Now.

Students from Sydney private schools Monte Sant’ Angelo, Trinity Grammar and MLC are members of Speak English or Piss Off.

Facebook declined to comment on the sites.

Moar later, maybe.