THEGAYUK

Tag: Facebook

All the latest breaking news on Facebook Browse THEGAYUK’s complete collection of news, articles and commentary on Facebook.

  • Facebook’s new ban on mentioning sexual roles and preferences are “horrifying”

    Facebook’s new ban on mentioning sexual roles and preferences are “horrifying”

    Facebook has taken aim at the information you can share about yourself on its platform.

    (C) BIGSTOCK

    In a new policy move, Facebook has banned a raft of sexual details which you are no longer able to discuss about yourself on the platform. The policy which is named the “sexual solicitation” policy has been branded as “horrifying” by critics and it could adversely effect LGBT+ users on the platform.

     

    The policy could potentially ban gay, bisexual and transgender users from discussing whether they are top or bottoms on the site as it seeks to ban “sexual hints such as (the) mention of sexual roles, positions or fetish scenarios”.

    The platform says it is now “drawing a line” when any conversation leads to a “sexual encounter between adults”.

    No nudes, no positions, no roles

    It will also ban users from sending nude pictures to each other as the policy specifically bans “offering or asking for nude images”.

    Facebook’s community standards says, “Do not post content that engages in implicit sexual solicitation, which can be identified by… using sexual hints such as mentioning sexual roles, sex positions, fetish scenarios, sexual preference/sexual partner preference, state of arousal, act of sexual intercourse or activity (sexual penetration or self-pleasuring), commonly sexualized areas of the body such as the breasts, groin, or buttocks, state of hygiene of genitalia or buttocks.”

    The policy change comes just a day after blogging site Tumblr said it was going to remove all adult content from its site.

    Global community is sensitive to this kind of content

    One of the reasons Facebook has decided on the changes is because it says some in its “global community” may find the content “sensitive”. It also said that some users might find it hard to connect with their “friends and the broader community”.

    Looking for a “good time” go somewhere else

    (C) BIGSTOCK

    Facebook is also banning suggestive elements such as saying that you’re “looking for a good time tonight”, you’ll also fall foul of the ban if you mention “sexual roles, sex positions, fetish scenarios, sexual preference/sexual partner preference, state of arousal, act of sexual intercourse or activity (sexual penetration or self-pleasuring), commonly sexualised areas of the body such as the breasts, groin or buttocks, state of hygiene of genitalia or buttocks”

    What you can do

    Well, THEGAYUK.com has a social network where you are welcome to upload and talk about whatever you want – as long as it’s legal. Join today for free.

     

  • Has Facebook deleted Milo Yiannopoulos?

    Has Facebook deleted Milo Yiannopoulos?

    It looks as though Facebook has deleted Milo Yiannopoulos’s page on the platform.

    Having amassed a whopping 2.3 million likes on Facebook it seems Milo Yiannopoulos‘s page has been suspended from the social media giant. The page went missing on the 30th October, with the controversial public speaker and journalist taking to his Instagram account to upload a picture of his page on Facebook – now an error holding page saying “this is a new one”.

    Now when a visitor now goes Yiannopoulos’s page on Facebook they are greeted with a standard, “sorry, something went wrong” page.

    Milo is no stranger to being banned from social media, he was first unverified then removed from Twitter in 2016.

    To top it all of, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio requested that a talk about the politics of Halloween to be given at NYU by Yiannopoulos be rescheduled. Yiannopoulos wrote, that he was “without question the most censored man in America”, before saying that the 1st Amendment, the free speech amendment in the US was dead.

    Yiannopoulos revealed last week that Facebook allegedly told him to take some of his statuses down claiming that he was supporting terrorism, saying, “This is why you don’t see me jump on current affairs and be present these days. I can’t express the same opinions that even other conservatives do. I don’t want to lose these accounts or leave Facebook and Instagram. But they’re basically instructing me what jokes I can make and what opinions I can have at this point, capriciously, arbitrarily and inconsistently, doing the bidding of SJW journalists”.

    On Instagram, he wrote, “The entire city of New York is terrified of one gay man stepping out of line and calling out the Left as the intolerant, censorious crybabies they are. And they just proved it—by censoring me again. I couldn’t ask for more conclusive proof: The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, today demanded my talk at NYU be canceled (“rescheduled” in their euphemistic language) and the President of NYU has complied. So. It’s not happening. I’ll post my talk online tomorrow instead. RIP, First Amendment. They’re not even pretending any more”.

     

     

     

  • Facebook bans body positive Naked Rugby Calendar Photographer

    Facebook bans body positive Naked Rugby Calendar Photographer

    The photographer of The Naked Rugby Players calendar has been booted off Facebook for posting a promo picture from the calendar.

    The world’s largest social network Facebook has kicked off the photographer of the Naked Rugby Players charity calendar, despite no genitalia being shown. The calendar, which celebrates inclusive rugby, body positivity and raises money for cancer charity, Balls To Cancer, is due for official launch towards the end of September.

    The calendar which is now on sale features six inclusive rugby teams across the UK and includes 71 gay, bi, straight and trans men from all over the UK, who took their kit off to raise money and awareness for male cancers and inclusive rugby.

    However, after sharing one of the promo pictures, the calendar’s very own photographer Monty McKinnen was booted off the Facebook platform for seven days.

    The ban comes just a few weeks after another body positive magazine found itself falling foul of Facebook-owned Instagram’s “puritanical” community guidelines.

    Taking to Twitter the official account for the Naked Rugby Players wrote, “Our photographer @MontyMcKinnen has been booted from #Facebook AGAIN for showing off some of The #NakedRugby Players assets whilst promoting #BodyPositivity and supporting @Ballstocancer – Best to follow him and us here to keep up to date on our picture releases!”

     

    To view the “offending” image CLICK HERE (NSFW)

  • COMMENT | Another Facebook alarm bell

    I confess I am one of the people who sometimes take tests on Facebook. So what is all of the fuss about?

    We need to be paying more attention to who can create and use Facebook accounts.

    Pretty sure that whenever me and my single brain cell have decided to partake in these online analysis of personality and many other brain-teasing trait-identifying, pigeonholing non-entities tests there is a stage at the end to post your results.

    This part of the process includes a disclaimer stating the originating program owner will get access to your personal data and friends list; if you proceed to post your results. I don’t. I take the tests out of my own curiosity with no intention of sharing so never give access to that sort of information.

    Perhaps Facebook was/is culpable of allowing a large amount of data to be shared, but ultimately it is generally the user who gives permission for the information to be shared. It’s not like it’s been stolen.

    If I was more worried about Facebook and how it is used and its foibles I would mention underage users. A couple of years ago I did a search for gay men in my area. Among the results were men who liked men and wanted to meet men. One of them was the 8-year-old son of a friend I worked with.

    Starting the day with an awkward conversation “Hey Phil, as you know I am gay. I looked for other gay men in my area on Facebook this morning. Best if I ask you to do this search too.” To say he was shocked as he scrolled down the page and found a pic of his 8-year-old would be an understatement. He didn’t know his son had a Facebook account. His son had not got to the age of being interested in girls so had checked interested in men. Ergo he came up in my search for gay men!

    If I was to scream anything from the rooftops it would be about safeguarding children. Online grooming is already a massive problem and a gargantuan organisation like Facebook was foiled by a little boy in primary school who had a natural curiosity to see what all the Facebook fuss and interest was about.

     

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.

  • Facebook suspends whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s accounts

    Is Christopher Wylie gay?
    Big Data and Christopher Wylie

    He’s probably one of the most famous people on the Internet at the moment. Christopher Wylie, the gay whistleblower at the centre of the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica data scandal has shared that his Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram accounts have been disabled “for violating” their terms.

    According to sources, Facebook has apparently demanded to inspect Wylie’s phone a requested to which he replied, “What do they want? To look through my dick pics?”

    His whistleblowing, on the alleged data harvested from 50 million Facebook accounts, through a personality quiz app has caused billions of dollars to be wiped off the value of Facebook and thousands of people to deleted their Facebook accounts.

    The hashtag #DeleteFacebook trended in the UK for most of the day on Twitter.

    Both firms deny any wrongdoing.

  • Facebook’s new newsfeed algorithm could be a disaster for gay media

    The changes to Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm could spell disaster for LGBT+ media.

    In case you hadn’t heard Facebook is planning to change its newsfeed to make sure the time you spend on its platform is more “meaningful”. Mark Zuckerberg suggested that he wanted users’ time on the site to be “time well spent”. Facebook wants to give you more family and friends and fewer page updates. The problem is that many smaller news publishers, such as LGBT+ media could find themselves unduly penalised by the new update.

    Many LGBT+ news sites rely heavily on traffic from social media sites like Facebook. A quick analysis of unverified traffic data from SimiliarWeb shows that PinkNews, GayTimes and Attitude had over 40 percent of their traffic driven by social media, including Facebook, in December, GayStarNews had 39 percent.

    Part of the update will also rely on a trust score from users, which Facebook will use to determine how often content from a particular publisher will show up in your timeline. For more established, huge brands such as the BBC, Guardian or CNN this could prove to be an advantageous policy. However, many LGBT+ news sites have been the target of hate trolls and could find their trust score unfairly compromised by homophobes and transphobes.

    If Facebook was to take these negative reviews into consideration, this new update could negatively impact LGBT+ media.

    Speaking out against the changes, PinkNews CEO, Benjamin Cohen asked, Facebook’s VP of news Adam Mosseri, “How will Facebook ensure that homophobes don’t label LGBTQ media as untrustworthy, anti-Semites label Jewish media as untrustworthy and at the same time trust the sources that spread hate?”

    Mosseri, wrote on Facebook, “We’re not looking to vet people. We are looking to make sure that our samples are as representative of the population as possible.”

    Scott Gatz, the founder of Q.Digital, which owns and operates Queerty, asked: “We’ve specifically had to deal with page followers who are anti-gay commenting/flagging posts/etc, we’ve even had to escalate to your management. Now I fear that this will be a quiet way for them to make us go away.”

    Mosseri added: “People can’t volunteer to weigh in on how trustworthy a page is, we pick a random sample of people to survey. Second, we only ask people who recognise a page if they trust it, so if you’re a small page we won’t have enough people and therefore this change won’t effect you.

    The changes will see the amount of news displayed in your newsfeed reduced from five percent to four percent.

  • Facebook Thinks You’re Gay Based on Three ‘Likes’

    Facebook advertisements take one swift look at a few of your “likes,” and make a decision about your sexual orientation, drug use history and more—whether you purposefully post it on your profile or not, according to a new study out of Big Data. (more…)

  • Is Social Media Wrecking Your Relationship?

    Just under half of all Brits admit they have secretly checked their partner’s Facebook account and one in five went on to row about what they discovered, new research has revealed.

    One in seven said they had contemplated divorce because of their other halves activities on Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Twitter or What’sApp.

    Nearly a quarter or the 2,000 married Brits asked, said they had at least one argument a week with their partner because of social media use and 17 per cent said they rowed every day because of it.

    The most common reasons for checking their partner’s social media accounts was to find out who their partner was talking to, to keep tabs on them, to check who they were out with and find out if they were telling the truth about their social life.

    While 14 per cent said they looked specifically to identify evidence of infidelity.

    The research was commissioned by family law specialists Slater and Gordon who have seen an increase in the number of people citing social media use as a cause of divorce year on year.

    Andrew Newbury, head of family law at Slater and Gordon said:

    “Social media can be a wonderful way of keeping in touch with family and friends, but it can also put added strain on a relationship.

    “Five years ago Facebook was rarely mentioned in the context of a marriage ending, but now it has become common place for clients to cite social media use, or something they discovered on social media, as a reason for divorce.

    “With more than 556 million people using Facebook each day, the way we live our lives, and our marriages, has drastically changed. We are finding that social media is the new marriage minefield.

    “Social media, specifically pictures and posts on Facebook, are now being routinely raised in the course of divorce proceedings.”

    It wasn’t just what their partner was doing on social media but also how long they spent on it that was likely to cause marital problems with Facebook usage topping the list of reasons couples argued over social media.

    Arguments were also caused because of contact with an ex-partner, sending secret messages and posting inappropriate photos.

    One in twenty even complained that their partner didn’t post any pictures of them together which made them upset.

    Fifteen per cent of Brits considered social media to be dangerous to their marriage, with Facebook considered the most dangerous, followed by WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram.

    But one in ten admitted they hid images and posts from their partner, while eight per cent admitted to having secret social media accounts.

    A fifth of respondents said they felt uneasy about their relationship after discovering something on their partner’s Facebook. 43 per cent said they confronted their spouse immediately about this, but 40 per cent said it took them some time before they felt comfortable to raise it with their partner.

    While a third said they kept their social media log-in details a secret from their partners, 58 per cent said they knew their partner’s log-in details, even if their spouse wasn’t aware they knew them.

    Andrew Newbury, head of family law at Slater and Gordon said:

    “Social media can also make a divorce more difficult. Divorce is already a stressful time for everyone involved and what is being posted on Facebook can antagonise families and make a speedy resolution more difficult to achieve.

    “We are now actively advising our clients to be cautious when it comes to using Facebook and all forms of social media because of its potential to damage relationships.”

     

    Have you ever checked on your partner’s social media or other profiles?

    Yes
    No

    Poll Maker


    TOP FIVE TIPS FOR COUPLES USING SOCIAL MEDIA

     

    1. Don’t post in anger. Your post will be seen by all your friends, family and potentially millions of others. Even if you later delete your post, the damage will have been done.

    2. Be respectful. Don’t complain about your partner or other family members online.

    3. Be transparent. Check with your partner before you post images or information.

    4. Check your privacy settings. You might think someone can’t see a post when they actually can.

    5. Take a break and enjoy the moment. You don’t need to post everything on Facebook

  • Falling Out Of Love With Facebook

    It’s happened three times already this year. Either it’s a trend or I should start taking it very personally… Messages from Facebook acquaintances sweetly explaining that they were frightfully sorry but they were streamlining their contacts lists to close chums only but hope our paths cross in future… Blah blah blah.

    A quick, unscientific survey of a few friends reveals that it’s not just me this has happened to. Coupled with a large number of people I know who as of 2015 have resolved to use Facebook less, it’s clear that there is a shift going on in our relationship with social media.

    We all know the Facebook friend collectors. Hell, I was once myself. That 5,000 friend limit that Team Zuckerberg imposed became less a ceiling, more a personal challenge. And in a blinding bit of maths, us friend collectors cottoned on that more friends equals more likes equals winning in the popularity stakes. Or giving the impression of it at the very least. You’re never alone with 5,000 online friends right? Right??

    The other snag of friend collecting; that potential headspin of a mismatch between online popularity and the real world. Why go out and mix with people when one can save the bus fare and interact from a laptop?

    But after sitting gawping at a news feed of viral car crash videos, pictures of dinners and the nagging thought of Who The Hell Are You People?, friend collecting soon becomes fairly redundant. With a contact list of several thousand people, social media ceases being a fun, informative ammendum to life and starts being an unpaid administration gig.

    With numbers of monthly users steadily dropping, privacy concerns and controversy over censorship and user name policy, it’s getting more difficult to feel the Facebook love. But the truth is that for all its many flaws, it remains a massively useful resource for keeping in touch and promotion. The downside being of course that overfamiliarity breeds contempt.

    If there is a conscious move to slim down our Facebook account in 2015, then the biggest shock is it’s taken this long for social media fatigue to kick in. Back at the start it was a new platform and no one knew quite how to use it. When it exploded, it became a vehicle for anything and everything. There are times when the sheer weight of images and information that clog our home pages on an average day are overwhelming.

    So much to process. And there are times that just keeping up with everything is a struggle. That feature we all liked about FB at the start, the sharing of information and keeping in touch made easy, has turned it into hard work. No wonder there is a shift towards Back To Basics.

    The former FB buddies who sent me the apologetic message and then hit delete may just have the right idea. A social media experience that is smaller, more ruthlessly edited and, heaven forbd, features only people you know from the offline world and actually like… The numbers of names on the list may drop. But as an exercise in quality over quantity, it may just be the thing that saves Facebook and its like from one day being that website we all used to use in the early 2000s.

     

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.

  • Facebook Announces Custom Gender Options To UK Users

    Today – following a successful launch in the US earlier this year – Facebook has announced a new custom gender option to help people better express their own identity on Facebook.

    (more…)

  • Facebook Introduces Gay Pride Icons

    Facebook has launched a number of gay pride icons for users to celebrate Pride season

    Facebook has released a number of free LGBT-themed emoticons – featuring leathermen, a disco man and two sailors and one that looks like RuPaul for gay pride season.

    A Facebook diversity spokesperson said,

    ‘We’re celebrating Pride by adding these free Facebook Messenger stickers to the Sticker Store. We see this as one more way we can make Facebook a place where people can express their authentic identity. Happy Pride!’

    The emoticons can be used within Facebook’s messager. You can install the stickers through the emoticon menu.

    Earlier in the year, Facebook transformed its gender reporting feature – allowing users to define their gender to around 50 different gender expressions.