Fair enough, every time you access the inter-tubes, someone somewhere is gathering info on you. I just don’t do it voluntarily by having an actual FB account. As stated below, I don’t need to know:
Facebook is generally dumb. But pretending that kind of thing is the only thing that ends up on there is even dumber.
I know pornography when I see it, and this ain’t it.
On a larger scale, while I’m personally not on Facebook, a lot of people are and get their news through that site.
It’s scary that Zuckerberg has such an oversized editorial influence. Putin and Xi would be jealous. Not saying he’s using his powers poorly, but the potential is there.
Yes.
Humans being humans, it would be unusual if he didn’t abuse that power.
I also do not have a FB account, but like any other free enterprise, FB can choose the rules under which they operate. If you don’t like their rules, close your account and stop contributing to their profits. Free speech (at least in the US) is only protected from government interference, not newspapers or magazines or on-line media setting the rules for content. I see posts flagged for removal from TPM from time to time and I do not see that as a free speech issue. With respect to that picture, I am also a Vietnam combat veteran and think the picture should be widely disseminated as a reminder of the horrors of ALL wars, especially on children.
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So, photos of naked, starving children in Ethiopia is CHILD PORN?
Photos of DEAD naked children in Nazi concentration camps is CHILD PORN?
This DaVinci painting is CHILD PORN?!?!?
Almost every damned NATIVITY SCENE is CHILD PORN!?!?! to Facebook?!?!?!
Fuck Them.
Every. Single. Day. my decision to never, EVER open a Facebook account is confirmed.
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Some sickos get off on posting pictures of war porn, the genitals are incidental. I see it occasionally on Twitter. They don’t do it to provoke thoughtful contemplation of the horrors of war, they do it because they enjoy shocking and disgusting people.
Does FB also censor the photos of the naked dead bodies from WWII concentration camps? Or are they piled up well enough to hide the “naughty bits”? How does an algorithm recognize “naughty bits”? It has to have been some idiot youngster who had no idea of the iconographic meaning that that photo carries.
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Not a fine line at all. Here we have a world-reknowned world-changing photograph which does include genitals but in a completely non-erotic and non-exploitive way. That is objectively not “kiddie porn”.
The simple Facebook policy would exclude award-winning photographs and artwork from its prude filters. Even list the specific awards-giving bodies which convey exceptional status to photographs enabling them to bypass prude filters. Pulitzer would definitely be on any such list.
Fuck, this photograph was in my fucking late-1980s high school history textbook!!! There is nothing remotely reminiscent of “kiddie porn” to it!
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This is what happens when you subcontract the public arena to privately-owned companies. They can make whatever rules they damn please, and they do.
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I was 11-12 years old when I saw the infamous Napalm Girl photo in my local newspaper and Life magazine. We even discussed it in grade school. Yes, we had Social Studies and Civics back then. To this day this photo has had a impact on me.Seeing it at a young age plus discussing it in school helped me evaluate what was being told to me by the media. Our young selves tried to process this. Was every foreign intervention in the national interest? Are our national goals just? Some of my classmates back then had older siblings who were in Nam and a couple did not make it home. For Zuckerberg to censor one of the most iconic and important photos in history shows what little regard he has for history and our country.
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I somewhat disagree here.
We have long allowed private enterprises to curate their publicly-sourced pages. For instance, opinion and letters to the editor pages in newspapers. “Freedom of speech” is freedom from the government we have elected impinging upon our speech, as you know, and we have a long history of letting private industry make their own rules there (which is why those who hate freedom of speech and other Constitutional rights love the idea of privatization, but that’s a different rant for a different day…)
Where the line here comes is when the entity purports (or effectively conveys) to have little or no curation. Obviously Facebook has terms of service, but for the most part when you look at the hateful and ignorant bullshit they allow to be published you would be forgiven for assuming that de facto there is no curation there at all. This is where the “light curation” model has problems: it becomes a playground for “social value engineers” to adjust how the public sees news and history. That can be a problem (and by the fact that it can be a problem, the existence of such “lightly curated” sites is de facto cause for concern to those of us on the lookout for revisionist historians and those who seek to mold public opinion to their tastes).
IMHO, however, the issue here isn’t that Facebook has a light curation model. The issue is that their curation model is so naïvely defined and simplistic that it can’t tell the difference between a world-reknown, history-changing photograph and kiddie porn. That is just insane application of a prude filter that doesn’t acknowledge reality and as a result impinges upon the discussion of important historical events and how they relate to the world today.
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I have one just so I can post smart ass comments on Huffpost, too. See it’s not just here.
Maybe Zuckerberg should go Phuc himself.