Discussion: Facebook Under Fire For Deleting Norwegian PM’s ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

Wow, a very fine line.

While it is a hugely iconic and relevant photo, keeping it on-line on Facebook could open the door for future kiddy-porn purveyors to post their crap, and claim a precedent.

Gotta go with the FB ruling.

Gated internet communities are a joke and the Zuck has truth issues dating from college…just saying.

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As one of the apparently few people on the planet that doesn’t have a Facebook account,
I have no dog in this fight. ;-}

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I agree. If I wanted to know what someone ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day I would go in the attic, get my Great Aunt’s diary out of a chest and read it.

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Speaking of which did anyone read a few of Josh’s skipped over reddit questions yesterday???

Um. no. As this shows, they make exactly the rules they want. I don’t have an account either, I think the only good thing about Facebook is outing racists.

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So was removing the photo a good thing or bad? Not arguing, just curious…

That ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is about as sexy as a picture of … well, I can’t come up with an appropriate metaphor that isn’t horrible itself. It isn’t. Anyone who gets their jollies from this photo has serious problems and is probably already barred from even having a computer to look at it with. Sorry, but this is a well-regarded historical photo that had profound implications for the direction of that war and should be viewed by everyone to see what the horrors of war are all about. Pixilating the naughty bits also blurrs the horror. Facebook should be ashamed of itself.

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I have a sneaking feeling that the Prime Minister of Norway and the newspaper had a fight with with an algorithm that no human at FB looked at for hours and hours after it started because of the timezone difference.

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I think it was wrong to remove it.

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Good for him! What a bunch of sanctimonious dumb FKs FACEBOOK can be. STUDY the FACTS before you ‘act’. Geezzz…you’d think Zuckerberg was following the ‘new journalism’ rules…

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As a Vietnam vet I disagree that photo, especially that photo, should be posted the world over as an example of madness…

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A valuable perspective. Thanks…

Context is important. In this case, it is everything.

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I’m old enough to remember when the photo was originally taken / published
Fully agree with all the good feedback from folks, so I retract my original position. Keep the photo.

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If you are aroused by “Napalm Girl” or the other horrors on that photo spread, you should seek professional help. Those photos are iconic. What is Zuckerman going to do next, put a fig leave on Michelangelo’s David.

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Perhaps something FB needs to consider?

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart
Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964

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Ah, but you do. Facebook, like it or not, is now the most used media in the world for posters. The entire concept of progressive human speech (free speech in the USA) is built on the idea that the powerful cannot (should not, must not) silence the small. Whether you belong to FB or not, you are a human who may be impacted if speech can be suppressed by algorithms.

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I doubt that. They kicked a prominent Norwegian writer off of Facebook, which led to a bigger story that the Guardian got involved with as well as Norway’s biggest newspaper.

This went on long enough and involved enough high level organizations that FB had plenty of time and warning to get actual living people involved. The Guardian and Aftenposen almost certainly would have tried to contact FB for a statement.

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