After the breastfeeding and mastectomy photos, she did not allow a lingerie company to upload an ad for… tights to her profile, judging it as "pornographic"
A pantyhose advertisement by the American company VienneMilano is the latest "victim" of Facebook censorship.
According to the complaint, which was posted on the company's website and circulated on the Internet, via... Twitter, Facebook's mechanisms did not allow it to upload a photo from its new advertising campaign, as it was deemed to have "pornographic content.".
The photo was full-length and showed the model wearing only the company's new nylon stockings, while standing in profile, covering the "controversial points" with this pose.
Is the naked body pornography?
"Yes, it is naked," the company admits, "but since when is nudity automatically considered pornographic?" And it continues the reasoning of the complaint: "The human body is a creation of beauty. Too bad Facebook doesn't agree! We realized this when it took down our image, considering it not to be 'compatible' with the 'community terms'. Honestly, we don't understand how exactly our photo violates these rules."
Facebook's rules in the "Nudity and Pornography" subcategory of the Terms of Use state, verbatim: "Facebook's policy is strict when it comes to sharing pornographic content and sexually explicit content involving minors. We also impose restrictions on the display of nudity. We share and respect your right to share content with personal meaning: from photos of a sculpture to family photos of a child breastfeeding.".
However, this general definition of "we impose restrictions" on nudity is what allows Facebook to signal each time what falls under "pornographic" content.
There are in fact quite a few cases where, despite explicit mention, photos of mothers breastfeeding their babies have been taken down, or photos of women who, in the context of breast cancer awareness, showed their mastectomies - and these were taken down by the social media giant, for the same reason.
The reactions were of course stormy worldwide, resulting in at least two of these cases, Facebook itself publicly admitting that "mistakes happen", while specifically regarding mastectomy, the announcement said: "The vast majority of these photos are compatible with our terms. However, photos that show a woman's bare breasts, without the effects of a mastectomy, clearly violate Facebook's terms.".
The "nipple movement"
However, after the outrage caused by this particular event, female cancer patients and activists identified Facebook's problem in... the nipple of the female breast!
Concluding that if the nipple is visible in a photo, the network considers it pornographic, they organized themselves into the "nipple movement" and are protesting, pressuring the American giant to reconsider its views on the issue of the naked female body and pornography.
A documentary has even been made focusing on this issue in the media in general, entitled “Free the Nipple,” by director Lina Esco, which criticizes the distinction between male and female breasts, clearly asking the question: “What is more obscene: violence or a nipple?”
Facebook is monitoring our conversations
In another case, Facebook itself informed the police that an adult user was attempting to seduce an underage girl in Florida, United States. Authorities visited the man and arrested him, using incriminating evidence from his conversation on the social network with the minor.
It may be considered an "angelic act" that saved a minor girl from the clutches of a potential criminal, but since when is what we discuss in our private conversations evidence of a crime?
In this specific case, Facebook had clarified that "we have not 'set up' an environment where our employees monitor private conversations, but on the contrary it is important for us to use technology that has a very low risk of failure," meaning that it has developed and implemented technology that detects "suspicious" dialogues in its environment.
The debate about Facebook and the censorship it imposes on its content has heated up. At the same time that -almost daily- we learn about yet another crime committed via Facebook, from the seduction of a minor to the recently "popular" cyberbullying, the interventions in the content that the user uploads to his profile, for many, constitute a clear violation of the freedom of publication, and even of privacy.
Source: protothema.gr
