Daily Life's 2016 Woman of the Year, Mariam Veiszadeh, was blocked from Facebook for sharing a highly abusive Islamophobic message she was sent.
The anti-Islamophobia advocate, whose determination in the face of incessant cyber bullying was commended by Women of the Year judges, said that being punished by the social media giant for pointing out the extreme opinion was a "terrible experience". She has since been unbanned from the site, which apologised after claiming the barring was a "mistake".
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Facebook appeared to sanction the abuse, which was on Tuesday sent as a private message to Veiszadeh, calling her a "f---ing disgrace" and "muslim filth" and claiming that she is "full of hate for our western culture".
"f--- off back to Afghanistan where you belong! you do not belong here! [sic]" ends the message, which was sent after news of a suspected pro-Islamic terror attack in Berlin emerged.
Because the two-part message was sent privately, it appears not to have contravened Facebook's controversial community standards, which rely on the public reporting of abuse. But when former lawyer and diversity and inclusion advocate Veiszadeh shared the message on her public page, the post was swiftly removed and she was banned from accessing her account.
Veiszadeh believes the post was reported to Facebook moderators by her large and highly active "trollbase" which, twisting the message to its advantage, likely highlighted its hateful content. There is, of course, a particular irony in the trolls' reporting of their own abuse.
Speaking with Daily Life after the 23-hour ban had been lifted on Wednesday, Veiszadeh said that she nowadays regularly learns of suspected terror attacks by receiving social media messages blaming her for the horrific incidents. Becoming the scapegoat for such acts of terror overseas, she said, was "deeply, deeply unfair" and that Facebook needed to do more to prevent trolling and online abuse.
"People think that there are absolutely no consequences for pushing their anger and sending you unreasonable, hateful messages and threats.
![Mariam Veiszadeh, Daily Life 2016 Woman of the Year.](/web/20161222075718im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/4/z/0/n/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtfhws.png/1482290349120.jpg)
"I feel that people need to be held accountable for their words and actions ... Our current political environment has emboldened people to hurl abuse at people like me under the assumption that they can simply get away with it," she said.
"I wouldn't feel compelled to share these posts publicly if Facebook had better regulations and processes in place to actually tackle these kinds of threats in a prompt and efficient manner."
She said that there appears to be no option to report abusive private messages from smartphones and that her experience identified a flaw in Facebook's reporting functionality. As is, the system - which needs urgent simplification - is being exploited by trolls and bigots whose "end goal is to silence advocates".
"There is a human being who clicks 'approve'. Someone is physically checking these reports," she said. "I'm not asking for special privileges. There has got to be a better, more consistent approach applied."
A Facebook spokesman told Daily Life that the removal of the post and Veiszadeh's subsequent ban were a mistake, possibly based on the face-value of the message's contents. When put into context, her post was clearly within community guidelines, he said.
He added that it takes just one report of contravened community guidelines to lead to a ban and that every report is looked at. He urged Veiszadeh and all users of Facebook to instantly report any abuse they come across.
The incident adds to countless other episodes of Islamophobia that have flown under Facebook's reporting radar. Calls to "kill as many [Muslims] you can" and "shoot the lot [of Syria sympathisers]" using guns, explosives and a fuel tanker at march for Aleppo in Brisbane remain on the site, for example.
I reported these through FB's reporting mechanism. FB said "just kill" the "Islamic filth" online "doesn't violate our community standards" pic.twitter.com/YvVjT3ZfWf
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) December 20, 2016
People talk about bombing/shooting Muslims during an Aleppo march in Brisbane. Facebook says NONE OF THESE breach community guidelines pic.twitter.com/fA4SLD6gQK
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) December 20, 2016
It is not the first time Facebook has banned Veiszadeh from her own page. In May, she was blocked for making a sarcastic joke about Waleed Aly's Logies win.
Feminist author and Daily Life contributor Clementine Ford was similarly banned from her Facebook page for posting sexist abuse she had received - while the original, vile comments went unmoderated.