People with disabilities face discrimination in their everyday lives, they should not have to tolerate offensive posts on social media as well! Please help us stop hateful posts, often full of lies and misconceptions, about people with disabilities. Facebook community policies discriminates against people with disabilities by excluding them from their hate speech policies, including a recent situation where a group called children with disabilities (Down Syndrome) "mutants," using stolen photos and spewing hate and falsehoods. It took thousands of incensed parents to report the page and its posts before Facebook finally took it down. Unfortunately, this is not the last we have seen of that group and probably not the last encounter we will see where people humiliate those who are disabled on social media.
Facebook and other social media sites need to include messages of hatred and bullying against people with disabilities into their policies of what is banned on their sites and to better train their employees to take quick action to resolve these issues as they occur. They need to immediately take down any posts where pictures of people, especially children, with disabilities are being used without permission in these malicious posts as soon as they are reported. This is unethical and a violation of privacy to the families of those whose pictures are being abused. It is their social responsibility to do so or else they lose our trust as a vehicle for social media. By taking no action, they are condoning it. So please join us and sign our petition to make Facebook and other social media sites stop being the vehicle for propagating bullying and harmful messages against these innocent victims. Our voices must be heard!
