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