Facebook has come under fire from Australian users for ignoring racial vilification on the site and failing to remove blatantly racist groups even though they have been flagged as offensive.

Sydney-based Facebook user Alex Gollan, who has campaigned against the racist groups, has been threatened with violence and fears the site could be used to rally people if another incident such as the Cronulla riots flares up.

The site permanently banned one offender this week but only after the issue of racism on Facebook came under the spotlight following revelations that Scots College and Kambala students had created anti-Semitic groups on the site.

The racist Facebook groups, which are still online at the time of writing, include: “F— Islam”, “I hate Israel”, “You’re in Australia … SPEAK ENGLISH!!!”, “Aussie Pride!!! Love it or GET THE F— OUT”, “Learn the Aussie Language, Respect Our Way Of Life, IT’s NOT HARD!!!!!”, “Respect Australia or F— OFF!”, “Asian drivers should be forced to display A-Plates” and “I cannot tolerate SOUTH AFRICAN ACCENT”.

Sample postings, too vulgar to be reproduced here, are full of racial epithets, derogatory remarks and threats and taunts for Muslim users to blow themselves up or leave the country.

But even Australian Facebook groups without blatantly racist names attract discrimination, as people feel they are free to share controversial views because of the anonymity offered by acting from behind a computer screen.

“I have personally had groups which have been set up for the appreciation of where I live … which have had rude and racial pictures uploaded by members in a hope to spark some sort of ‘online fight’ where people become all hard and tough behind their computer screens and say things they would never say if they were put in person,” Sydney Facebook user David Cohen said.

Gollan, who created the Facebook group Australians Against Racism & Discrimination, said he had been harassed by two racist Facebook members for months, “who have stalked my address, posted photos of my car number plates, distributed my mobile phone number, found out where I study and at what campus, and located the suburb where I live”.

Gollan sent 12 emails to abuse@facebook.com to report the incident but the only result was one of the members being banned for a week. The offenders soon created two new temporary accounts and continued harassing him.

“I am not the only person he has located and threatened to ‘visit’,” Gollan said, adding that none of the physical abuse threats had yet been acted upon.

This week, Facebook banned the user following queries from this website. Some of the racist postings on Facebook have also been deleted, presumably by users who fear they will be exposed in news articles discussing racism on the site.

Aboriginal Facebook user Chris Bonney and several of his friends tried for months to convince Facebook to shut down the group “I’m not apologizing for shit u f– abo’s - this is our country now!”, however, he received no response from the site.

Bonney said he eventually resorted to contacting people who appeared on the friends list of the group’s moderator, informing them of the racism.

“He eventually closed down the site because of our work … but the main issue is Facebook didn’t do one thing to stop this sort of behaviour,” Bonney said.

Asked to respond to the claims that it was not doing enough to stamp out racism on the site, Facebook said it took all complaints by users seriously and there was a “dedicated team” investigating such complaints, which can be made through the “report” function on any page of the site.

“Facebook is a platform, and as such we sometimes see users posting about, debating and discussing controversial issues,” the company said.

“However, this alone is not a reason to disable a group. Facebook will investigate, and will remove any content that violates our Terms of Use.”

Facebook’s Terms of Use explicitly state that users can be banned if they post “any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable”.

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