Just imagine the harm seeing a breast can do to a vulnerable young child. /s
Facebook needs to literally grow up, removing porn is one thing but clinical images, mothers feeding their children and such should not even be up for discussion.
It's a fine line between protecting your users from seeing offensive content and outright censorship, good to see them doing the right thing in this case, pity it is still on a 'case-by-case' basis instead of a healthy review of their policies.
The main criterion seems to be 'is the internet raising a large enough stink'? If yes then restore the image.
The weird thing is I'm around a lot of conservatives in a conservative place in this country, you know, the people who supposedly are the ones getting offended. I haven't found one damn person who thinks Facebook is doing the right thing. I'm really trying to find these offended people, but I cannot.
The Vietnam photo censorship was met with quite a bit of confusion since I think most folks misremember it being our high school history book.
I'm starting to think that one group who keeps calling the FCC over TV shows is alive and well online.
Do you remember the super bowl janet jackson fiasco? There were millions of people outraged by an accident and it almost wrecked her career. It's issue like this that mean that Facebook has to build aggressive adult filters that will have false positives. Because frankly the cost of a false negative is much much bigger than a false positive.
I watched that Superbowl half-time show with my two young at the time children. What I remember was that although I barely noticed the one or two seconds of exposed nipple, I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to explain the need for the erectile dysfunction medicine which was being advertised later in the show.
That was the most hilarious outcry in the history of my life and people over here still joke about nipple-gate - and how utterly, utterly confusing the whole reaction was.
In other words: I'd say there were an order of more millions of people amused about the outcome.
Now here's the thing: Mocking other people's morality isn't going to help here, I understand that. Giggling has no place in this debate.
But .. we're talking in a specific context here. Facebook. The company that wants to impersonate The Internet™. If they adopt the morality of their home country, then their rules are going to be absolutely insane in the rest of the world.
Morality isn't being defined by Facebook, nor by the US. It's a personal choice. And while 'no pornography' is an understandable business choice, 'breasts are the devil' or 'let us pretend that no human has nipples' is somewhere between hilarious and stupid if you extend that beyond a certain demographic.
The correct method of resolving this historico-religious female-breast-shaming is for all famous women to immediately cease wearing any type of clothing that covers the breasts. Weather permitting.
Millions? the FCC said there were 540,000 complaints from Americans[1] of which 65,000 came from the Parents Television Council[2]. The media cared more than the people.
Heck, I wonder if we polled on it, how many think MTV's response was the bigger problem.
For one thing you can't really compare an act that's purely entertainment to a video that could theoretically save someone's life. It just doesn't have as much value.
Secondly, what Jackson did is against the law, which wasn't the case for the FB video. Public airwaves and all that.
And lastly, if you think that was an accident I have a bridge to sell you.
I agree about the adult filters. Companies like Facebook, youtube, and Twitter can't hire people to look at every single video. They don't have the margins.
I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find someone who is offended. There's always somebody. But this isn't something that's going to offend your average conservative - titillation clearly isn't the point of a video like this.
I think the only thing I'm offended by is MTV denying it was planned. They were trying to generate some controversy and got stupid. Hell, they didn't even do titillation correctly.
Facebook assumes that advertisers will be offended because advertisers assume that a certain % of consumers will be offended and they'd rather not lose that %, as small as it might be.
I had the unique opportunity of visiting a nudist event recently. While children weren't allowed, some of the people had grown up in nudist communities. They are incredibly capable people with no trauma; nudity itself just isn't damaging -- not all nudity is sexual.
Loved your anecdote and this culture is at least somewhat common in my home country.
That said, I'm not convinced that sexuality on its own is damaging either. I'm not sure if you implied that with the second half of your statement/the nudity vs sexual distinction.
They don't need to remove porn though. They could keep a NSFW counter and increment it for every piece of suspected porn you post. If your NSF counter / post count is greater than 0.2, start hiding your posts from people with a low NSFW ratio.
This way, even if they mis-categorize a medical image it won't be banned, just not widely disseminated.
> pity it is still on a 'case-by-case' basis instead of a healthy review of their policies.
They reviewed their policies over a year ago and images of breasts are allowed if they're breastfeeding, or after mastectomy (either reconstructed or tattooed or just left) or raising awareness.
1. I didn't call naked female breasts porn, I only said that classifiers have a hard time identifying what is porn vs educational imagery. One example if you think about it is that many simple classifiers utilize skin color. More skin color, more likely to be porn. So yeah, even if you don't want to consider just naked female breasts porn, your classifier might still make that mistake.
2. As someone who works in abuse, defining porn is really nuanced. You don't get to define porn for yourself, and while I actually do agree with where you stand on cultural norms in general, when it comes to offering public services you actually have to just go with what people find acceptable per country / comply with laws. So in some countries what would be called porn isn't considered that in others (topless women in Europe, or bikini-clad women in USA).
You can argue that all countries shouldn't body shame women or set rules for what they can and cannot wear / especially with double standards vis a vis men. (And I personally hold that view too.) But that's a societal issue / opinion and not related to having to define service behavior, which exists in society and has to comply with its whims.
It also shows just how bad Facebook is at machine learning (among the other top machine learning companies). They can't even distinguish "cartoon breasts" from real breasts?
Just look at this video, and see how ridiculous it is that Facebook had an automated tool that would take that down:
> Facebook needs to literally grow up, removing porn is one thing but clinical images, mothers feeding their children and such should not even be up for discussion.
But people are offended by seeing clinical images of nudity, mother feeding their babies, etc. And Facebook wants to placate all of their users so nobody has a reason to leave.
Of course, they can't please everyone, but they'd rather make a fool of themselves before they'd become a more morally/socially opinionated corporation like Starbucks.
Why can't those people use the function Facebook designed specifically for this in the first place, the function I use whenever I see some stupid, insipid, high school grade political meme?
"Hide this post"
I'll take honest answers and snarky ones as well, provided the snarky ones come with a genuine laugh because with this DDoS going on this morning I could REALLY use a chuckle right now..
I'd wager that they might say that once you see the damaging thing, the damage is already done. Therefore, hiding after the fact is not the same for emotionally scarring stuff and silly stuff that is just spammy.
Hrm. Okay, that's valid. Can't bring myself to agree with facebook wholesale removing content like this, but one size does not fit all so I'll give you that concession.
I've met and worked with people like that, whether it's from a cult upbringing, a personal traumatic history, mental illness, or whatever. I doubt they hang out on HN, but they probably have Facebook accounts like everyone else.
Does Facebook have a representation in those countries?
Besides that, we're not talking about porn. Unless you want to see breast cancer videos and mothers feeding their children as porn but that would be a perception error, the label simply does not apply.
Facebook has offices in Dubai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Singapore. These restrict internet pornography by law; even though much of actual Internet traffic may still be porn, businesses do not wish to associate with it because porn could provide a too convenient legal handle to prosecute representatives or shut down services as a retaliation for publishing things that are e.g. critical of the local government.
Of course we are not talking about porn, but drawing lines in the sand is a murky business.
Burkas, burkinis in France. (It's a bit more complicated then that, hence the scare quotes.)
Depending on who you ask, it's either because of some hand-waved nonsense about public safety, or because liberal Western values include telling women what they can and cannot wear.
Why can't Facebook filter out whatever they want to filter out? I mean, you wouldn't want to see penises all over your feed, and not everyone necessarily agrees with you about the appearance of breasts(except me, I want more breasts on my Facebook), so I can understand why Facebook would make such a decision without necessarily deeming it as wrong. Nobody has to use Facebook. And their main criterion, "is the internet raising a large enough stink", seems perfectly reasonable to me. But what a weird world we live in that a short-lived incident about womens' breasts ending with an apology from Facebook gets a news story. Then again, it's the BBC, so I shouldn't be surprised.
> Why can't Facebook filter out whatever they want to filter out?
Why can't people let Facebook know what should and shouldn't be filtered?
Facebook already have policy that breasts are ok when they're raising awareness of breast cancer or being used to feed children, so facebook is ignoring their own existing policy.
That's fine, so long as your attitude toward it doesn't perpetuate female body shaming nor prevent my retina from being exposed to the female anatomy because of some misguided belief that the naked female breast constitutes pornography outside the scope of medicine and breast-feeding.
Well, nobody has to use cars, trains and busses, we have legs and we can walk ;-)
I think that FB is inside a fear bubble of its own making. They have to apologize too much lately and this hints to something wrong in their vetting process. Maybe too much imperfect AI or too much imperfect human judgements.
I for one welcome our new robotic overlords and agree that it isnuncomfortable to be reminded that my favorite sexual objects are in fact meant for other purposes as well.
I wonder if seeing breast feeding triggers a fundamental paradox in us humans. Seeing as how we're the only primates who have boobs even when not breast feeding. Originally boobs meant that this femal is not available for sex. In humans it means that she is very available BUT ALSO that she isn't.
This is confusing and this conflict causes discomfort.
> I for one welcome our new robotic overlords and agree that it isnuncomfortable to be reminded that my favorite sexual objects are in fact meant for other purposes as well.
So you would be "uncomfortable" having a female coworker that was using a breast pump? No wonder this industry has such a gender problem!
If she was doing it in an open office for everyone to see? Probably, yeah.
I wouldn't say anything, obviously, but I definitely wouldn't be as comfortable with it as I would, say, a sneeze.
I'm sure my female coworkers wouldn't mind vigorous nutsack scratching out in the open for all to see would they? It also is a perfectly natural activity and often necessary.
But hey, I also get annoyed at people who chew loudly.
The dilemma boils down to: people often find people's bodily functions discomforting. Where is the line for propriety? We somewhat allow nose picking. We don't like butt scratching. Occasional burps are fine, loud farts are wrong. Pooping anywhere but the toilet is gross, peeing on the side of the road is sometimes okay. Eating in publi is fine, chewing with your mouth open is not. Somewhere on this spectrum is breast feeding and breast pumps.
Swizec, you're disappointing me with these comments. It's maybe related to how your culture views these things but women breastfeeding in public is (and should be) perfectly normal anywhere and if it makes you feel uncomfortable then I suggest the problem is on your end.
As for you scratching yourself: that is not something for which there are no alternative options, however, breastfeeding a newborn happens frequently and has to happen when it does and no amount of discomfort on your end will change the fact that it is as normal as you eating a sandwich or drinking a glass of milk.
If a woman is doing it 'in an open office for everyone to see' it may mean that your society is more accepting than you think, or that no more suitable alternative was available. If the lady is comfortable with it and you're not you could simply ignore them?
I've only ever known women that wanted a private place in the office to pump, not pump at their desks. I could be wrong but I don't think most women want their coworkers to see them pumping in their professional environment.
It's the law in Illinois that employers must provide such a place, and it cannot be a bathroom stall.
> I'm not sure if any woman would ever want to pump openly in the office.
If it was more widely accepted and there was less fear for making coworkers uncomfortable, I believe most women would surely prefer to pump at their desk while they work instead of having to sit in a bathroom stall.
I kinda get the feeling like you are baiting me to mansplain...
Speaking from my own limited experience, my wife finds the whole process of pumping at work uncomfortable, regardless of what her coworkers might feel.
Having to carry dirty breast shields to the sink to clean, having to hold the bottles up to her (exposed) breasts (pump bras don't work for her), the fact that she may leak, the sound the pump makes etc.
> I believe most women would surely prefer to pump at their desk while they work instead of having to sit in a bathroom stall.
Forcing mothers to use a bathroom stall just seems cruel. In Seattle, it's now building code that office buildings provide a "wellness" room for mothers returning to work.
My wife's office turned an old supply closet into such a room, but it was pretty bad, and guys were using it to take naps (they would leave when she knocked on the door--but still what a shitty thing to deal with).
Once Corp HR found out about it, they got a different room that is a bit nicer, and installed a lock requiring a key. Even still, she will prefer to come home and pump.
> If the lady is comfortable with it and you're not you could simply ignore them?
Which is what I would do. Politely ignore it.
And that means I'm uncomfortable. I don't tend to politely ignore things that I am comfortable with.
That said, I think we're missing the point. Why is the mum of a newborn in the office in the first place? She should be enjoying her many weeks (52 would be great) of paid maternity leave. And society should not penalize her for it, of course. That's the problem we should solve, not whether pumping/feeding at the office is polite or not.
I never said anything more than looking at breastfeeding/pumping makes me uncomfortable. I did childishly compare it to other bodily functions but hey, it's a bodily function.
It appears that Facebook never argued that the image was in breach of its policies. Just that some software it runs had a bug that miss classified this image.
Then when challenged they apologized and approved the add.
So to me the summary appears to be "Software company has bug that effected one customer, apologies and fixes the issue" which must happen every hour of every day...
"Breast cancer awareness" is a thing only because it is a form of signaling that privileges female bodies. That's why it has such tremendous buy-in despite already saturated "awareness" going back 20 years, or the fact that there are a half-dozen causes of death with greater preventibility and lethality even just considering women.
I'm really tired of people engaging in pointless signaling campaigns and expecting to get points for being So Brave in the face of ~ universal consensus that they are correct, or taking minor bureaucratic snafus like this as evidence that they are somehow not in a position of complete victory.
Every time I see these I think the same thing: this shouldn't be an issue. If we weren't allowing so few players to define so much of our experience of the internet, it wouldn't matter that much what any single one of them decides to censor. Hopefully it will be that way again someday.
I think part of the problem is that companies need to censor these sorts of images or run into regulatory trouble because being an "adult" site has some regulatory implications they don't want to run afoul of
This reminds me of the incident with the Norwegian newspaper posting the "Napalm Girl" photo.
Facebook is trying to automate the detection of illegal/unwanted images, and it seems extremely difficult to detect the context of the image to the extent that you can differentiate between acceptable images of human bodies, and unacceptable images (which would be, I assume, the vast, vast majority of such images posted).
I wonder how they could proceed with this- maybe with some sort of anomaly detection, where you do a first pass to detect all images containing the unwanted features (e.g. naked bodies), and then a second pass to try and detect the activity that's going on, or to detect if the image is famous (e.g. a picture of David, the famous Italian statue, would be acceptable, while a photo of a naked man in the same position would presumably not be).
As long as they remove breast pictures instead of pictures of beheadings (I complained several times as they appeared in my newsfeed, but they were always deemed as "ok"), our world is not going anywhere in terms of peace.
I do agree this is ridiculous and they should be embarrassed about this kind of stuff, but I do want to remind people that Facebook is an advertising product selling "you" to advertisers. They have to please their advertisers, not users. I am glad to see people complaining. I hope people continue to complain and news outlets like this ridicule them, but until we stop giving our information away for free to these corporations, they are going to continue to do immoral and dangerous activities. Facebook is not the problem here. We are!
Facebook is eventually going to get into more systematic mess over this sort of rubbish.
Have one single clear principle and apply is consistently. Change the principle don't make exceptions if needed. "Educational videos wont be removed" could have been a good policy that Google has had for Youtube.
Or even "No Breasts"can be a good policy too. If you want to show breast cancer videos do it on you tube, shoot it with a prop or link to another page. I dont see why that does not work.
Facebook needs to literally grow up, removing porn is one thing but clinical images, mothers feeding their children and such should not even be up for discussion.
It's a fine line between protecting your users from seeing offensive content and outright censorship, good to see them doing the right thing in this case, pity it is still on a 'case-by-case' basis instead of a healthy review of their policies.
The main criterion seems to be 'is the internet raising a large enough stink'? If yes then restore the image.