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from the even-computers-can-have-dirty-minds dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...] Facebook's naughty bits police have been active for some years.
They ensure, for example, that human eyes don't have to witness a doll's nipples or even works of art.
It seems, though, the company continues to struggle with the difference between real body parts and those that have been created by human hands.
As the Telegraph reports, Italian writer Elisa Barbari decided to use a picture of a local Bologna icon -- the statue of Neptune -- on her Facebook page.
Facebook, however, seems to have found it a touch too risqué.
Barbari said she received a message from Facebook's censors that said, in part, her image contained "content that is explicitly sexual and which shows to an excessive degree the body, concentrating unnecessarily on body parts."
[...] This is merely the latest brouhaha involving Facebook's censors. In September, the company removed an iconic image of a naked child during the Vietnam War that had appeared on a Norwegian newspaper's Facebook page.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by butthurt on Friday January 06 2017, @03:28AM
Website using a combination of machine vision aided by rabid SJWs* goofs and then does right thing.
What they did initially was consistent with their terms of service, which say:
You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
-- https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms [facebook.com]
Meanwhile, thousands at least, who knows how many other users, whose voices will never be heard by the media are stuck with the goofs that happened to them as permanent, hidden demerits against their accounts.
Yes. Facebook are curating their site so that nudity is forbidden, except when there's a public outcry in favour of it.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 06 2017, @02:05PM
Yes. Facebook are curating their site so that nudity is forbidden, except when there's a public outcry in favour of it.
Just to note -- at least in terms of children (as mentioned in the summary relating to the Vietnam era photo), their stance is probably legally prudent, given that ANY nude photo of a kid aged between about 18 months and 18 years could potentially be branded as "child porn" if law enforcement is out to get someone.
While I understand such laws are targeting pedophiles and "sickos," to me it's a little sick that laws and police investigating things just assume than any nude photo of a kid is automatically considered "sexual." That's a complete perversion (yes, pun intended) of the law, and it shows how beholden our society is to a bizarre sense of prudishness about human bodies.
Nevertheless, in that case at least, I understand Facebook's stance. And frankly, I'm a little disappointed that the discussion in the media about the Vietnam photo wasn't more nuanced when it happened a few months ago. You had this huge outcry from journalists and historians about the "significance" of that photo, but let's be honest -- if there were just about ANY other nude photo of a girl that age (even if it seemed clear from context that it was not remotely sexualized), people would be screaming "child porn!" and getting ready to lock someone up for trying to share such a photo on Facebook.
But that's a discussion people don't want to have.
I know it's a somewhat different discussion than the Neptune statue here, but the underlying thread is a PRESUMPTION in American society that "nude = sexual." Rather than ranting about the stupidity of some of Facebook's classifications, what we should be doing is asking WHY Facebook is being prudent by enforcing such draconian censorship. Their policies are being driven by society's general mores, and if we're going to ask Facebook to be more reasonable, maybe people should start looking in the mirror first.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 06 2017, @09:10PM
Their policies are being driven by society's general mores [...]
Yes, but my assumption is that it is more about Facebook wanting to avoid displeasing their audience or their advertisers (and if the audience leaves, so will advertisers) than it is about avoiding prosecution.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 06 2017, @09:01PM
*My last remark should be qualified by "judging by this news story and the story about the 'napalm girl' image" because those were the only basis for it.