A former employee of a company outsourced by Facebook to handle removal of reported items has spoken to Gawker about what makes the cut and what gets binned in terms of inappropriate content.
You might be surprised about where the world’s largest social network draws the line between what is decent and what is not. The obvious ones such as images of a graphic sexual nature, acts of gratuitous violence and or scenes of death, necrophilia, bestiality are all on the list of banned categories, and I don’t think anyone of sound moral mind could argue against that. But some other images you might assume harmless are also in the firing line.
Apparently photoshopped pictures – whether portraying those featured in them in a positive, negative or neutral light – are to be removed if reported. Another example that has had people up is arms is breastfeeding. There are numerous mothers’ groups who share photos of themselves in the act of breastfeeding for educational purposes that have had their photos removed due to the partial nudity on display. However, nudity in the name of ‘art’ is fair game as far as Facebook is concerned, and those pictures are free to remain on the site.
If you have spent months or years uploading photos that you feel are good-natured, chances are that you won’t want them to be deleted by an over-zealous content moderator. SocialSafe can backup all of your Facebook photos – including ones that you are tagged in – and keep them securely on your own PC or Mac. If your online social life is just as important as your offline social life, isn’t it time you had a copy of it offline as well?
This still doesn’t address the problem of vindictive reporting. People just reporting photo’s because they don’t like someone!
The obvious solution is to automatically ‘unfriend’ someone when they report a photo, then that person isn’t forced to see these ‘objectional’ photos any more! If more than one person reports a photo, THEN it goes to a moderator.