Facebook OKs Decapitation Videos (But No Breastfeeding)
If the monotony of college roommates getting engaged is enough to push you away from Facebook, the social network has a new stance on horrific violence that might draw you back in: beheadings are allowed.
Zuck's Click Hut has been notoriously prude when it comes to nudity, but graphic murder is unaffected, for now. The site ruling comes after the discovery of Islamist execution videos, and subsequent, obvious outrage. ABC News reports Facebook's new, very nuanced view:
“People share videos of these events on Facebook to condemn them. If they were being celebrated, or the actions in them encouraged, our approach would be different,” Steinfeld said, noting that when Facebook reviews the videos that have been reported as graphic, they look at the context in which it’s being presented.
“We want to draw a distinction between users who want to share events that are important to them and videos that are being celebrated and shared for sadistic pleasure,” he said.
This is tricky, because one man's murder video glory is another's object of disgust—and what about videos presented sans context? This will take a lot of human mediation if it's not just going to be completely arbitrary.
Plenty will say this is fucked up, that we should be able to bounce around Facebook without even a chance of seeing someone get their head chopped off. But Facebook wants to be the internet, not just part of the internet—which means allowing for all the perversions and horrors we can stumble upon with Twitter, Google, or whatever else. Just not breasts. Remember, no naked women, ever.