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The Coventry disabled activists taking on Facebook over hate speech

Joey Mander says despite reporting a comment about people with disabilities being called 'animals' five times, the comment was not removed from the social media platform.

A group of young people from Coventry Youth Activists has taken on Facebook over online abuse suffered by people with disabilities.

Joey Mander from the group told us it reported a comment about people with disabilities being called 'animals' five times and feels let down that the social media company didn't remove it.

The group has now met with Facebook but received no promises.

Now with the support of Coventry Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi it's launched a petition that needs 100,000 signatures to bring it up in parliament.

We invited Facebook for an interview and it supplied this statement:

"We do not want hate and abuse on our platforms and we take action on content and accounts that break our rules. Between January and March we removed over 33 million pieces of hate speech content, over 93% before anyone reported it. We have also built safety features, including Comment Filters and Message Controls, which can meaningfully decrease the abuse people experience. We will continue to work with the police, partners and industry experts to collectively tackle this issue.”

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