Facebook Bans Animated Breast Cancer Awareness Video Showing Circle-Shaped Breasts (theguardian.com)

Last month, Facebook deleted a historic Vietnam war photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, claiming it violated Facebook's restrictions on nudity. Now it appears that the company has removed a video on breast cancer awareness posted in Sweden after deeming the images offensive, the Swedish Cancer Society said on Thursday. The Guardian reports: The video, displaying animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, was aimed at explaining to women how to check for suspicious lumps. Sweden's Cancerfonden said it had tried in vain to contact Facebook, and had decided to appeal against the decision to remove the video. "We find it incomprehensible and strange how one can perceive medical information as offensive," Cancerfoden communications director Lena Biornstad told Agence France-Presse. "This is information that saves lives, which is important for us," she said. "This prevents us from doing so." The Guardian went on to report in a separate article that the the Swedish Cancer Society decided to make the round breasts square to evade Facebook's censorship of female anatomy. The group issued an open letter to Facebook featuring the pair of pair of breasts constructed of pink squares as opposed to pink circles. Facebook did apologize for banning the video, saying in a statement to the Guardian: "We're very sorry, our team processes millions of advertising images each week, and in some instances we incorrectly prohibit ads. This image does not violate our ad policies. We apologize for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ads."

Comments

Re:Lighten up .... the people reviewing the photos

[mvdwege]

But isn't it funny that every time a mistake is made it is nudity that is the target? While the hate speech and violence is left alone?

And for 'funny' read: "Piss off with your American prudishness".

How nice of Facebook!

[hyades1]

Facebook's "apology" is nothing but a cynical attempt to stem public anger...the kind of anger that might cause governments to act against it.

Until an aggrieved party can access an appeal process in a reasonable time and get ridiculous situations like this taken care of promptly, Facebook remains an irresponsible gate-keeper, and its apology remains a fraud.

We'll leave for another day the fact that Facebook is inflicting its prissy, Puritanical standards on the rest of the world. And no, the argument that "you can always stop using it" doesn't apply. It has occupied its niche in the internet's ecology completely, leaving no reasonable alternative. Practically speaking, it is a monopoly.