Comments featuring the word ‘gay’ mysteriously disappear off Gillette UK’s Facebook page
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I have just posted “not if you’re homosexual” and lets see if that stays on their page
I agree with the action! Companies, groups, individuals don’t want those comments on their pages…
It encourages more people to comment about ‘gay’ terms and could encourage more homophobic comments… I don’t agree that as a company comments about being ‘gay’ should be hidden – it’s homophobic and let people comment upon it to show their hates towards this specific community!
I think that’s rubbish. Gillette et al seem to forget that gay people also buy their products and need to consider it more in their advertising strategies. Unfortunately the gay customer doesn’t sit well with this latest advertising thread they have developed.
Lynx is another one that monumentally overlooks gay customers in every ad they cook up.
My guess is that gay responses expose shortcomings in their advertising strategy more than anything else.
I find the Lynx adverts horridly objectifying of women, and the smell of their products in some cases actually makes me want to gag, Sooo cheap and nasty, ad also why some straight men put so much on is baffling. I mean, how are you supposed to impress someone when they can’t bloody well breathe! spend a little more cash, and less is more. i guess i won’t be buying Gillette razors any more.
maybe they hope that gay men have more expensive taste then a £1 bottle of lynx.
Ryan,
There is always a danger of that – and homophobic comments should be deleted. But you’re missing the point. I do NOT want to be invisible in society – that’s been the problem all along, and things have gotten much better since we left the closet and were visible to our friends and families, and to more people in society. So I disagree that they should remove what were inoffensive, non-controversial perfectly normal, even witty, comments. That is homophobic, because it deprives us of joining in, it’s discriminatory and segregationist. What a stupid idea that Gillette products are only for heterosexuals – which is essentially the message. Essentially it’s Gillette saying if gay people use them, that’s fine, but we don’t want to hear about it, or for any of our straight customers to hear that. Disgusting attitude for them to have.
No. That is backward logic. You delete the hate speech and show a solidarity with a large portion of your customer base. Now this company has a reputation for being homophobic. It will be on the minds of not just LGBT customers but PFLAG customers as well. It will effect their purchasing choices.
@ Liam Martin: I think that is a good idea. The other comment *could* have been considered derogatory.
It’s stil there :)
deleted. and mine.
My comment: “I’m a gay man, so I’ll have to ask my boyfriend what he thinks!”
I just posted ‘Not if you’re gay’ and it lasted 50 seconds.
Yep. Definitely removing posts they don’t like. Proved it. Took a screen grab, and some moments later my comment was gone.
Most unfortunate as I’ve been using their products for over 30 years. That’s another to add to the list of “banned” products.
They deleted my post ‘Not if you’re gay’ within a minute.
Then I reposted with ‘Not if you’re homosexual’ and it’s still there.
I notice a ‘Bill Jones’ ‘Not if you’re gay also lasted less than a minute.
Time to switch to Wilkinson then?
No, it’s not, it’s time to give Gillette a right good kicking – and make them change their ways, and pay through the nose for their mistakes. I expect a charitable donation to Albert Kennedy Trust and a gay-themes advert on national TV.
Your thought was my first thought, but why the f**k should I change products because of stupid admin on a facebook page – make them change and make them pay. IF it took a concerted 6-month national boycott then we should be willing to do that, yes, but better to make them change their homophobic ways. Root out homophobia and stamp on it.
Rant over. :D
Now they’ve wiped out everything back to the 15th Feb.
Looks like the posts are still there, but further down the page. Probably promoted their 15th Feb post so that this is the first thing that appears on their page — hoping people won’t see the posts further down.
What a curious thing to say ” we can’t find record of these posts or your test.” – Do they have access to facebook’s audit logs?
I don’t get to see past (deleted) posts anywhere on facebook that I’ve seen. I just tested it on one of the facebook pages I manage and once a user’s comment is deleted you get a short time to undo the delete, then there seems to be no way back. It is gone (at least from the page manager’s point of view)
It seems they may have set up a block list;
https://www.facebook.com/help/131671940241729/
and that they have may have considered the word “gay” offensive like “cock” or “bum” or … whatever. So we’re lumped in with words they consider off-limits. Madness. Who reviewed these words? Did they consult a brand-manager company? At the moment I may have to consider boycotting procter and gamble (owners of Gillette UK). I hate writing to companies to complain but in this case I’m going to have to make an exception. This is rank homophobia – they had ample chance to review the list and remove that term.
Perhaps we should set up a “Boycott anti-#LGBT companies” facebook page, where we can discuss these things, … without posts getting deleted.
Procter and Gamble support the republican party in the United States and are also against equal marriage. I always look at products before I buy them to see who makes them and where they are made. Cracker Barrel cheese products is also another company supporting discrimination against gay people.
Fcuk. Wish I’d known that before. Now I’ll have to go through all my products and word out which ones are to be …. discontinued, and which the alternatives are.
I haven’t seen a good site saying which products people who are gay should buy, and which ones they should not, and why. We need one. Not so much a list of product to boycott, but ethical purchasing guidelines. Perhaps there is already a site out there, but I haven’t found it. I guess someone might be weary of creating such a site fearing the big companies will bully them in to taking it down.
I’d love to know how you source that Robert. Please share your secrets. I already boycott Pro-GMO organizations and companies against transparent labeling as well as the few I know that support anti-LGBT movements. So let’s put a few more on the list. Lol! I’m heading the way of the natural hippie, with organic foods, urban gardening, and now it seems unshaven legs. (*^.^*)v I think I just found a new upside to my asexuality.
Presumably it’s just standard ‘small town USA’ filtering software where ‘gay’ is listed along with, say, the N-word, the C-word, the F-word etc.
If so, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that it’s been Gillette’s specific policy, but obviously they need to sort it out PDQ otherwise they be guilty of condoning it.
Oops… fat fingered… “otherwise they’ll be guilty of condoning it.”
The ad should be taken down for being blatantly sexist as it implies that all women are shallow and only care about how a man looks and not what they think and it’s relying on stereotypical gender roles. This ad should be offensive to everyone, not just gays.
Deeply deep. :D
But right on all accounts. There is no denying that almost every individuals is attracted to eye candy, but the true beauty is always within. We often don’t think deeply enough about these things until pressed. You pressed the “Think Deeper” button. Well done.
Wilkinson Sword it is then!
Gillette is making it quite clear what sort of customers they prefer.
Before we all switch to Wilkinson — just remind me — what do we actually know about that company? Don’t want to move out of the frying pan and in to the fire. PLEASE tell me Wilkinson isn’t owned by Procter and Gamble !!! And also, how do we know Wilkinson aren’t aren’t anti-gay too?
No update from Gillette on #GilletteGate
How confusing, just found http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/procter.asp
That’s from 2004 – how has their position changed, if at all. Do they support, for example, equal marriage.
Needs more research.
Oh my lord, how is this news? Who cares?
I think we do care if we are putting our money in the pockets of people who would then some of that to discriminate against us. Is that not obvious ?
For what it’s worth, I’m in social media for a games company, and we’re seeing comments that mention “gay” in a completely positive context (i.e. “legalise gay marriage!” marked as spam automatically by Facebook.
I genuinely don’t think this is Gillette’s fault. It appears to be Facebook’s own agenda.
They posted this on their facebook page;
we have not deleted your comments and are currently investigating why this has happened with Facebook. Also, our moderation blocklist does not include the word “Gay”. All our previous posts should still be visible to you by scrolling down our timeline. Please let us know if this is not the case? If you have any screen-grabs of your comments that have disappeared please could you email them to pggroominguk.im@pg.com so we can forward them on to Facebook. We really appreciated your help on this and as soon as we know more, we will let you know.
I have provided definitive screen grabs – but if anyone else has any please email them. If it’s a facebook problem I have direct email addresses for them.
I have one other theory, that this is a concerted effort to discredit potentially LGBT-friendly companies. It would work by multiple accounts reporting individual posts as violations – causing the system to remove that post automatically — most things that happen on facebook are totally automated like this. OR, is there a category that a person could use to report a post which will cause that post to disappear immediately, e,g, reporting it as a legal violation, or sexually explicit? Also, are the permissions correctly set, or can a posting user remove other posts? Or is there a flaw which allows a carefully crafted exploit to do this?
surely admin have the right to restore said items if they were falsely flagged, false flagging abuse needs to be stamped out on facebook, youtube and other sites by removing their ability to report items as spam.
I’ve heard back from P&G;
We want to be very clear that our company is explicit in our Purpose, Values and Principles that we do not tolerate any form of discrimination and encourage diversity and inclusion as a key part of our business and people management models around the world. We have a very active LGBT network around the world and have recently been recognised in the Top 100 UK LGBT Employers by Stonewall. We were, in fact, very proud to increase our ranking 35 places this year. http://www.stonewall.org.uk/at_work/stonewall_top_100_employers/default.asp
And, if you look to their US operations, not a problem there either;
http://www.pg.com/en_US/company/purpose_people/diversity_inclusion.shtml
(see report at bottom).
More and more convinced this is a facebook problem, or a person or group trying to cause us to act against P&G / Gillette by painting them as homophobic. The AFA tried a boycott in 2004, maybe covertly now trying to get us to boycott P&G.
I have just checked the main Gillette page (worldwide) and the same thing happens.
Working with Gillette to understand this. They just asked me to post to their page, with my original comment. I did, then another post below, saying this was a test. In a few moment the original post, but not the second, was automatically removed. It’s a facebook issue – the engineers believe they know where the problem is, but their fix hasn’t yet worked.
So it’s actually being censored by facebook as I thought!
I don’t see how it is being censored by Facebook. I belong to many LGBTQ groups on FB and the word gay is used all the time with no problem. I think Gillette is attempting to divert the blame.
well someone did it … No use them passing the buck to each other.