A Facebook group for men, which posted women’s personal information and had posts making light of rape and domestic violence, has been removed after complaints from campaigners.
The invitation-only “Bloke’s Advice” group had more than 200,000 members before it was shut down by Facebook. Screenshots from the group show members posting women’s phone numbers and other contact details and encouraging others to send abuse or graphic pictures. There were also posts which made light of domestic abuse.
The page’s administrators have already set up a new site away from Facebook and are asking members to donate towards the site’s upkeep.
Sherele Moody, who runs the domestic violence support group The Red Heart campaign, set up a petition, which was signed by 15,000 people before the group was taken down. She said: “They say it’s a place for blokes to chat – well, there’s a line, and Bloke’s Advice crossed it.”
She said that she and other women who liked or commented on the campaign’s Facebook page received abusive comments, and one death threat, from members of the group. At times, members were flooding the comments of the Facebook page.
“Many of the women who follow our page are victims of domestic abuse. I really worried about their mental health while they were receiving these messages,” she said.
When complaints about the group initially surfaced last month, Facebook said it would not delete the page. Instead, Facebook deleted individual posts that violated its community standards. On Wednesday, Facebook confirmed it had decided to delete the page.
A Facebook spokesperson said: “Where there are a large number of posts in a group that violate our policies, we remove the entire group.
“Since the recent media coverage of this group, there has been an increase in the number of posts that do violate our policies, and consequently the group has been removed.”
Members of the group have previously defended it, saying it provided a space for men to talk about mental health and other issues. One of its administrators Brock Donhart told ABC those who posted the offensive material were not representative of the group’s wider membership.
He said: “Of course, we try to monitor everything we can, rude comments are taken down almost immediately when they are seen, with the people that post them blocked and removed.
“It’s just a shame that the [offensive] screenshots are taken as soon as someone posts something, and a story is made all about that.”
Donhart has not responded to a request for comment from the Guardian.
In a statement on its new page, the group said 3,500 of its previous members have signed up to the website.
It added: “The reasons for why our group was shut down are unclear. Blokes Advice is not illegal.
“Freedom of speech is not a crime and we do not support anything the extremist groups say we do. This is a place for blokes to get to get together and be social and help each other, nothing more nothing less.”
Moody said she and others at the Red Heart Campaign were concerned about the new site. “By signing up to this new forum, Australian men will be giving legitimacy to the organisation’s history of demeaning women and inciting violence against them,” she said.
