Facebook forces shut down of controversial Blokes Advice social media page

A PAGE accused of glorifying rape and violence against women. It’s supporters say the posts are from a few bad apples but Facebook disagrees.

A screen shot of some of the content on the Blokes Advice Facebook page which has now been shut down. Picture: Facebook.

A CONTROVERSIAL social media site which critics say glorifies domestic violence and demeans women has been shut down by Facebook.

The backers of the Blokes Advice page have protested the forced closure and said the vast majority of people on the page were not posting extreme views.

But the founder of a domestic violence support group has told news.com.au if those behind Blokes Advice can’t see what’s wrong with the page, “they are clearly part of the problem”.

Despite being given the axe, a replacement members only Facebook page, set up in its place, has already picked up 16,000 followers.

The original page was set up in Queensland in May and at one time boasted more than 200,000 members.

Posts shared on the site included details of gang rape, advice on how to force a woman into having anal sex and invitations to bombard women with porn.

Late last month on the page, a man claiming to be accused Tinder date killer Gable Tostee dished out dating advice.

Initially, the social media giant only deleted the most controversial posts but in the last week the entire page has disappeared.

A Facebook spokesman told the ABC that where there were a large number of posts that breached their guidelines they sometimes remove the entire page.

“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,” he said.

However, Blokes Advice is refusing to go quietly with a new Facebook page and a website popping up.

A statement on the Blokes Advice website claimed the reasons why Facebook shut the group down was “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,” the statement said.

“This is a place for blokes to get to get together and be social and help each other, nothing more nothing less.”

In May, the group’s founder Brock Paulke, defended the page and insisted that violent posts were the exception rather than the norm.

“I want to do good out of this group,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I’ve said on the group that we need to keep things within the rules of the group, and blokes that are breaching the rules have been removed.”

Blokes Advice claimed to help men reach out to one another and that they raised funds for charities.

However, Sherele Moody, the founder of anti domestic violence group the Red Heart campaign, said it beggared belief only a small number of people were responsible for the worst posts and said members of Blokes Advice had been “feral” since the page’s notoriety had grown.

Sherele Moody (right) of The Red Heart anti domestic violence campaign is battling to have Blokes Advice shut down for good. Picture: Facebook

News.com.au has seen a number of sexist and degrading remarks posted to the Red Heart Facebook page from men directly referencing Blokes Advice.

One man said those posting on the Red Heart page, a space for domestic violence survivors to share their stories, was “a group full of nothing but whingeing s**ts.”

“It’s not a few bad eggs because it’s been an onslaught for weeks,” Ms Moody said.

“They didn’t ask the men who posted these vile posts if they needed help and they certainly didn’t report to police the men who posted photos of women and their phone numbers and asked other men to target them with sexual explicit images.

“We wouldn’t allow this to happen in the street or the pub and it’s this kind of disrespect that leads to violence against women,” she said.

“We have 41 women dead this year due to domestic violence so if they can’t see what wrong with it they are clearly part of the problem.”

Ms Moody said she would be asking Facebook to remove the Blokes Advice pages that have since sprung up.

However, the page’s founders have appealed to former members to help fund a new website and mobile app.