The One About Facebook Being The Nudity Police

Originally published on sagbachronicles.com

Early on Valentine’s Day, after being on Mark Zuckerberg’s good side for a good stretch, his crew flipped on me. I was banned from using Facebook.

What really piqued me about the ban and its timing this year was that I missed the mawkish Valentine’s Day messages, between grown men living together, appear on my timeline. I live for the absurdity.

On account of my mildly erotic blog posts, someone invited me to join a Facebook group in which participants of both sexes talk wholesomely about sex. Being the new kid on the block and trying to make a good impression, I introduced myself by sharing a picture of male stripper baring his well formed derrière.

The picture was well received and one of the female members wondered what the anterior view looked like. Being the gentleman (read fool) that I am, I obliged her and posted the frontal view picture as well, showing him in his full glory.

Within seconds, I got a notification from Facebook that the picture had been removed, as it was in violation of the community standard.

And for good measure, I was given a 3-day ban.

The entire community standards can be found HERE, but here is an excerpt from the section the picture may have contravened:

“….We restrict the display of nudity and sexual activity because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content – particularly because of their cultural background or age. In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content. As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. We are always working to get better at evaluating this content and enforcing our standards.

“We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks……. Explicit images of sexual intercourse are prohibited. Descriptions of sexual acts that go into vivid detail may also be removed…”

Regarding the sensitive global community, I find it questionable that the members of a CLOSED group set up to talk about all forms of consensual adult sex, would be offended by a picture of a man’s dick. It is like saying participants in an orgy would be offended by a man walking around naked with an erection.

I am curiously fascinated by the fact that there are people employed by Facebook, tasked with browsing the contents of adult sex groups, looking for sexually explicit material. Awesome job, if you can get it. Isn’t that voyeurism? Or even pervy? Besides, how open-minded are these people? It might be a devout Muslim or Christian on duty that day and it would be reasonable to think that “their cultural background or age” would more than likely cause them to find any narrative on how to give a blowjob shared within the group offensive.

It would be altruistic if they diverted half the morality police deployed to look for sexually explicit material shared by consenting adults within a closed adult group, to defending the platform against purveyors of fakenews and therefore preventing the demise of the western democracy, as we know it.

Enforcing the community standards can be subjective. A friend of mine got a 30-day ban for sharing a picture of porn star Max Konnor clad only in his underwear on his wall. Meanwhile a cursory search for “Andrew Christian” on Facebook will take you to a page littered with underwear models.

Go figure.

Though I think my friend deserved the ban. Whenever anyone opposes his posts on his wall, he reminds them: “It is my wall, you can’t come and say rubbish here.” I reminded him that actually it was The Good Lord Mark Zuckerberg’s wall. His land, his rules and what the “Good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.”

Well now he knows.