Social media platform Facebook has come under sim­ul­tan­eous criticism from both the Abori­gin­al and Jewish com­munit­ies in Australia for allowing its facility to be used to promote racist ste­reo­types. In the last two months, Facebook pages promoting ‘Abori­gin­al memes’ and ‘Jewish memes’ have been estab­lished, with content that includes derog­at­ory gen­er­al­isa­tions about Abori­gin­al and Jewish people respect­ively, sup­posedly in the form of “humour”.
Following a torrent of com­plaints from members of the public and criticism from the Race Relations Com­mis­sion­er, Dr Helen Szoke, Facebook has made the ‘memes’ pages inac­cess­ible from within Australia. However, the pages remain access­ible from other parts of the world and the urls con­tain­ing the words “Abori­gin­alm­emes” and “Jew­ishm­emes” remain on the internet and are produced by searches of those words on the internet via most search engines.
Formal com­plaints to the Aus­trali­an Human Rights Com­mis­sion have been lodged against Facebook by both the Abori­gin­al Medical Service (AMS), Redfern, and the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ).
Executive Director of the ECAJ, Peter Wertheim, said “In social media platforms, the more viewers and dis­cus­sion, the more advert­ising revenue can be created, and this advert­ising revenue usually goes directly to the platform provider. Platform providers have a clear com­mer­cial interest against any form of reg­u­la­tion, and in being as per­missive as possible. And they don’t have the knowledge to judge what does or does not cross the line into racial hatred. The final decision about whether to allow an allegedly racist pub­lic­a­tion to remain on the net should not rest with them.”
The Chair of the AMS, Redfern, Sol Bellear, agreed adding, “Facebook, like any other large cor­por­a­tion, has a duty to act with social respons­ib­il­ity. The images on Facebook are amongst the most obscene examples of racism that I have encountered in my life. Facebook should take a strong moral stand, expunge any racist material from its web platforms and indeed, it should actively promote anti racist policies. There is nothing moral about making money out of racism”.