Photo by Thomas William on Unsplash
A French youth LGBTQ+ rights group, called L'Amicale des jeunes du Refuge, posted a link on twitter to an article by French spyware company Fireworld.
And yes, that is Colton Haynes as the article's Featured Image.
That tweet was then retweeted by French Secretary of State for Equality Marlène Schiappa, who also said that this article showed that "homophobia and sexism have their roots in the same gender stereotypes. We will fight them together."
The article, which was in French and has since been taken down, was focused towards adults and talked about how the parents could tell if their son (Son specifically. Not children, but son) is gay.
The article tried to explain some signs to look out for such as liking to read or liking theatre, being shy, liking female singers and divas, and "taking good care of himself.”
The article went further to sympathize with parents who were concerned about their son’s sexuality as, “family is fundamental. That's why the sexual orientation of your children, directly responsible for the continuation of your family, is very important to you.”
The article then stated some further steps the parents could take in order to confirm their child’s sexuality. This included “monitoring his Facebook use,” watching to see “if he has visited gay forums,” and “spying on his private messages.”
Credit: Saturday Night Live
And how would you do all that you ask? Why, of course, by using the Fireworld spyware app.
Which, by the way, is an illegal act in France since that would be using a spyware program on someone else’s computer to monitor them. But, Fireworld might be trying to use raising a child as a loophole in the system.
But once again, once L'Amicale des jeunes du Refuge and twitter raised a fuss about the article, it was immediately taken down and Fireworld apologized.
They also said that “the article had the sole aim of improving search engine optimization and was never intended to be read by humans.”
As someone who has written for SEO sites before, I get that.
Companies like Fireworld hire third party companies, which hire writers, to write random articles that they can shove into dark corners of their websites. Then, they have more content that people can find on search engines and hopefully find their website/service through.
That said, companies do have the option of monitoring what articles the SEO companies write up. It just looks like Fireworld was caught not caring about what random writers put on their website.
Plus, on the English version of Fireworld, there is a wide variety of articles that cover topics such as how to "control your teenage offspring's PC", monitoring "what your employees are doing" and "detecting infidelity in your marriage or relationship.”
So, it doesn’t look like the “monitor your son to confirm he’s gay” article is the only one of its kind that Fireworld is willing to publish and it won’t be the last.
