AOL's Double Standard on Profiles

According to this SF Chronicle story, AOL prohibits members' profiles from describing how they like to have sex with gay men, but allows descriptions of how they like to kill gay men. Hmmm. Something seems wrong here. The ACLU, NationalGayLobby.org, and HateWatch are looking into it.

Comments

not so sure

[Trepidity]

I'm somewhat skeptical of this. To quote from AOL's Terms of Service:

Language: Mild expletives and non-sexual anatomical references are allowed, but strong vulgar language, crude or explicit sexual references, hate speech, etc. are not. If you see it, report it at Keyword: Notify AOL

I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).

Re:not so sure

[Saige]

I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).

I think that's part of the point. That they seemed to "overlook" the hate speech of hundreds of members, while being quick to delete the profile of the one with the sexual reference in it.

Of course, we're living in a country where almost everyone thinks of sex references as inappropriate, but at least half the population doesn't see what's wrong with anti-gay hate speech, where "fag"/"faggot" are pretty much the only remaining slurs considered "acceptable".

I'm sure AOL would have been QUICK to remove the profile if someone had listed "nigger bashing" or "killing Japs".
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Re:not so sure

[Trepidity]

Well, I have no idea how they run their monitoring, but if you report hate speech, they'll most likely remove it.

I suppose that still leaves the question of whether they enforce things unevenly, but at least if you see uneven enforcement you can report the things that didn't get enforced.