'Hateful' Facebook page does not violate standards

A controversial Facebook page remains online after being reported more than 20 times for posts containing hate speech.

The community page, entitled Common Sense NZ, posts political links often containing anti-Muslim, anti-gay, or derogatory comments towards women.

An online response from Facebook said the page was not in violation of its community standards.

Georgia Harris, mediation officer of Auckland University’s Campus Feminist Collective, was called a “dumb, oestrogen-laden b****” and a “godforsaken retard” by an administrator of Common Sense NZ.

Ms Harris said the page was clearly “hateful” and the response from Facebook was unacceptable.

“It’s completely unacceptable if that doesn’t violate community standards. It’s obviously hate speech and it’s really not good enough from Facebook.

“I complained multiple times because there were so many things it violated, hate speech to a religion, to a gender, to a sexuality, not based on any evidence whatsoever,” Ms Harris said.

Facebook offers a number of ways for users to report a page or make a complaint, but does not offer any live support.

Ms Harris said she doubted the reports were being dealt with by a “real person”, and was concerned by Facebook’s inconsistent approach to reported posts, especially those containing nudity.

“If there’s even a tiny bit of nipple it gets taken down really quickly,” she said.

A spokesperson from the Human Rights Commission said complaints about Facebook pages were dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and depended on whether the issues raised were covered by the Human Rights Act.

The creator of the page, a white male in his 20s who did not want to be named, said he and other page administrators set up Common Sense NZ for the purpose of trolling leftists and socialists.

“We decided we should make a page to wind up leftists, and debate them on their level. We knew it wouldn't be hard to wind them up because they get triggered easily at the best of times.”

“We started making memes and paying money to promote them on Facebook with leftist groups as their target audience,” he said.

The page creator said the posts were intentionally inflammatory, and the viewpoints expressed were held by those who post them.

“We are able to substantiate them to significant degree against anybody using rudimentary first principles rooted in philosophy,” he said.

The page creator said that one of the administrators of the page was Auckland mayoral candidate Adam Holland, grandson of former Prime Minister Sidney Holland.

Mr Holland told Te Waha Nui he had ‘liked’ the page on Facebook, but denied involvement as an administrator.

A number of Facebook users who had ‘liked’ posts on the page were contacted, but all declined to comment.

Te Waha Nui made contact with Facebook, but the company was unable to say why the page was not in violation of their community standards.