Facebook’s arbitrary, unwarranted, and unexplained actions: it needs to learn from its mistakes
Apologies if you’re sick of this story – I am too. But the latest in this sordid saga needs to be reported.
The background: On Saturday Facebook threatened closing down Victoria Buckley Jewellery’s Facebook page because it showed an unclothed doll (top image at left), prompting widespread media coverage and global discussion. Many mainstream media such as Sydney Morning Herald and London Evening Standard used the original picture, suggesting that they didn’t think it was objectionable.
As Victoria was scared of losing her Facebook page with now close to 2,000 fans, a key way of connecting to her customers and community, she deleted images of the doll from her fan page, and replaced them with self-censored images, black bands hiding what Facebook presumably considered to be ‘nudity’ (middle image on the left). She put the original images on a new Facebook page Save Ophelia – exquisite doll censored by Facebook. Facebook promptly deleted the images from the site, and shortly afterwards closed down the site completely. Given all the offending images had been already deleted, they presumably objected to the discussion of Facebook’s censorship.
The latest: Facebook have now deleted the self-censored image of the doll from the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page, leaving her with nothing (bottom image on the left, though she has now replaced it with an image that contains no trace of either flesh or porcelain, for safety’s sake).
Since Facebook have yet to contact Victoria, or to my knowledge respond to the many media requests for response on this issue, we can only guess what they found objectionable about the censored image. Her chin? The way her legs are crossed? The length of her hair?
Since Facebook closed down the Save Ophelia site AFTER they had deleted the offending images, it is still possible that Facebook will close down Victoria’s page, with nothing to conceivably offend other than commenters expressing their unhappiness at Facebook’s stance. Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far.
Facebook thrives because a broad community of individual and companies use it to connect. When Facebook’s actions are arbitrary, patently unwarranted, and completely unexplained, that allure fades. Facebook has learned from some of its past mistakes. I hope that there is enough attention paid to this and similar cases that Facebook realizes it needs to learn from this mistake too.
