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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the Can't-touch-this!-♫♬ dept.

Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: Facebook Still Can't Figure Out How To Deal With Naked Breasts:

[...] Going back over a decade, the quintessential example used to show the impossibility of coming up with clear, reasonable rules for content moderation at scale is Facebook and breasts. In the early days, as Facebook realized it needed to do some content moderation, and had to establish a clear set of rules that could be applied consistently by a larger team, it started with a simple "no nudity" policy -- and then after that raised questions, it was narrowed down to define female nipples as forbidden.

[...] This might have seemed like a straightforward rule... until mothers posting breastfeeding photos started complaining -- as they did after a bunch of their photos got blocked. Stories about this go back at least until 2008 when the Guardian reported on the issue, after a bunch of mothers started protesting the company, leading Facebook to come up with this incredibly awkward statement defending the practice:

"Photos containing a fully exposed breast, as defined by showing the nipple or areola, do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed," he said in a statement. "The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

More public pressure, and more public protests, resulted in Facebook adjusting its policy to allow breastfeeding, but photos still kept getting taken down, leading the company to have to keep changing and clarifying its policy, such as in this statement from 2012.

[...] In 2014, Facebook clarified its policies on nipples again:

"Our goal has always been to strike an appropriate balance between the interests of people who want to express themselves with the interests of others who may not want to see certain kinds of content," a Facebook spokesperson told the Daily Dot. "It is very hard to consistently make the right call on every photo that may or may not contain nudity that is reported to us, particularly when there are billions of photos and pieces of content being shared on Facebook every day, and that has sometimes resulted in content being removed mistakenly.

"What we have done is modified the way we review reports of nudity to help us better examine the context of the photo or image," the spokesperson continued. "As a result of this, photos that show a nursing mothers' other breast will be allowed even if it is fully exposed, as will mastectomy photos showing a fully exposed other breast."

Right. And then, just a few months later, people started protesting again, as more breastfeeding photos were taken down.

[...] Late last week there were reports in Australia of some (reasonably) outraged people, who were angry that Facebook was taking down a series of ads for breast cancer survivors.

[...] As the article notes, the ads showed "10 topless breast cancer survivors holding cupcakes to their chests". In another article Facebook gives its reasoning, which again reflects much of the history discussed above:

Facebook said it rejected the ads because they did not contain any education about the disease or teach women how to examine their breasts.

It said since the ads were selling a product, they were held to a higher standard than other images because people could not block ads the way they could block content from pages they followed.

So, clearly, over time the rule has evolved so that there's some sort of amendment saying that there needs to be an educational component if you're showing breasts related to breast cancer (remember, above, years back, Facebook had already declared that mastectomy photos are okay, and at least some of these ads do show post-mastectomy photos).

[...] And those rules will never encompass every possible situation, and we'll continue to see stories like this basically forever. We keep saying that content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and part of that is because of stories like this. You can't create rules that work in every case, and there are more edge cases than you can possibly imagine.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:24AM (4 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:24AM (#840094)

    If the purpose of a platform is distribution of political propaganda, side issues like boobies are going to REALLY confuse them as a platform.

    Remember the users are the product that FB sells to advertisers; this is another one of those situations where the general public hilariously thinks FB exists to serve them what they want and from that point of view women who want people to look at their boobies are very confused why FB is not "helping" them. The reality is FB sells user attention to advertisers and boobies don't sell well cross market.

    Now targeted advertising might help. If FB shows boobies to heavily repressed elderly female church goers, there will be a backlash. But if they show nice boobies to me, I won't mind at all! That is the power of targeted advertising. I'm kind of surprised that FB can't target accurately enough to show me cute boobies while blocking them for elderly female utah residents or whatever. I suppose this is the kind of thing, much like jetliner autopilots, that has to be 100% correct all the time to prevent a media firestorm.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:42AM (3 children)

    by sshelton76 (7978) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:42AM (#840099)

    Just to correct your facts. Utah has one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the world due to many women, especially elderly women being "down winders", i.e. those who were exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. As a side effect, Utah also has some of the most well funded, cutting edge treatment centers
    https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/ [utah.edu]

    There are lots and lots and lots of ads, billboards, TV, newspapers, you name it. Most Utah women are not in any way squeamish about breasts, breast feeding, or breast cancer pics. If they feel it is pornographic in intent or the result of sexual exploitation yes they're going to scream loudly as just about any woman would. But the vast bulk of women here have no problems with the category of pictures being discussed here and in fact would be the primary target audience.

    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:32PM (2 children)

      by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:32PM (#840374)

      "Breasts!"
      "Oh no, think about my children! I don't want to see anything more about this!"
      "A lot of people in this area are dying of breast cancer."
      "Oh no, think about my children! Give me as much information from as many sources as possible!"

      • (Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:42PM

        by sshelton76 (7978) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:42PM (#840380)

        Pretty much this, yes.
        It seems to be a female thing (no offense intended ladies), to demonize the viewing of breasts that aren't their own.

        I've never really understood it. I can run around topless all day long and no one says a thing. Hopefully one day women will have the same right, or at least exercise it since few places still have a "topless in public" law that is enforced. Also seems to be an American thing. Go to Latin America or Europe and women seem to be a lot more free in this regard.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:40PM (#840735)

        Demand monetization and copyright control of any media contained ANYONE's body, child or adult. Children should have full control over their personal brand and identity, same as adults, to sublicense for a limited period (required new negotiation and licensing no later than the age of 18.)

        If this was done, and a global system to find and tag copyright content was made, then children who were subject to such abuse would have the right to nail people for copyright infringement or license their likeness as they see fit. The cat is already out of the bag, but at least they could recieve financial recourse for it, something that last I have heard hasn't been a major focus of anti-child porn or child abuse laws. What happens to the children when they stop being children but are too fucked up to succeed at life?

        Think of the children is just a way to manipulate adults who don't want people to know they have something to hide, or are fool enough to believe they actually don't.