Following a boycott from advertisers and a campain put together by activists, Facebook now considers any content promoting domestic violence and rape as hate speech.

Numerous such pages had been increasing in popularity containing profanity and pushing violence acts against women have been taken down.

Facebook’s Vice President of Global Public Policy, Mame Levine wrote a blog post on Wednesday, May 29th “It has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate.”

She further said that the company’s guidelines system had failed to capture all relative content and admitted room for improvement, “We need to do better – and we will.”

WAM argued by citing United Nations statistics showing 70 percent of women around the world have experienced violence at some point in their lives. They further said that allowing such content on the social network added to the normalization of domestic and sexual violence against women.

After addressing Facebook a the letter, WAM and their followers brought together an entourage of advertisers asking them to boycott the social network. Fifteen companies, including Nissan UK, Specialty Natural Medicine and eReader Utopia, agreed o pull their ads from Facebook.

Under Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, hate speech is prohibited.

While addressing WAM’s concerns, Facebook said it would take immediate steps to halt those pages encouraging violence against women. WAM has since applauded Facebook’s efforts.

“We are pleased to announce that Facebook has responded with a important commitment to refine its approach to hate speech. Facebook has admirably done more than most other companies to address this topic in regards to content policy.”