Bowing to pressure from 186,000 signatures from Change.org and a Twitter campaign, Facebook removed rape joke pages from their network.
Facebook had earlier dismissed them as "pub jokes." With pages such as "You know she’s playing hard to get when you need another roll of tape," prompted several people around the globe to protest by signing petitions and joining a Twitter campaign in a bid to get the pages deleted from its Facebook.
The social networking behemoth had also received complaints from worried advertisers who feared their businesses would be perceived as being associated with these controversial pages.
Earlier in August this year, Facebook dismissed the concerns about the pages promoting rape by saying "Just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook".
Facebook has clarified by saying that there was no place on their site "for content that is hateful, threatening, or incites violence."
However, controversial postings will remain if administrators add a tag stating they are humorous or satire, according to the network.
On the other hand, Jane Osmond, from an advocacy website, said, "Simply removing the pages does not go far enough."
