Facebook Hates Your Boobies!
By raincoasterSome of us here in the Manoloverse may confess (after the second double Hendricks) to a slight dependency on various social media outlets. Nothing we can’t handle. We can sign out any time. We just choose to have our Twitter Following updates sent to our cellpone, and to sleep with it there beside us on the pillow.
Steve Jobs grant me the serenity to accept
the account settings I cannot change;
the technical chops to change the things I can;
and wisdom to pick a decent password.Blogging one day at a time;
Tweeting one moment at a time;
Accepting spyware as the pathway to Microsoft updates;
Taking, as Mahir did, this LinkedIn world
as it is, not as I would have it;
a cross between NIN.com and Lolthulhu.com.
Trusting that the guys in IT will make all things right
if I surrender to their obnoxious preference for blocking Blogspot;
That I may be reasonably happy in Second Life
and supremely happy with The Sims
Forever avatar.
Amen.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Some of us are rather fond of our little Facebook pages and so on, to the extent of posting pictures there of not only ourselves but also our unsuspecting families. And this is where Facebook has a problem with us.
Now, this may come as news to teenagers and college kids everywhere, or, indeed, to journalists who do their homework, for lo, the boobage of Facebook is verily mountainous, rules or no rules.
So Facebook has decided to take action. Facebook is running around Facebook, deleting pictures of breasts wherever it finds them, and this is where the real problem lies: Facebook is deleting pictures of mothers breastfeeding their babies on the grounds that such pictures are, by definition, “obscene.”
From Time Magazine:
On Dec. 27, some 11,000 protesters held a virtual nurse-in by uploading breast-feeding photos onto their Facebook profiles, and 20 or so women showed up at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., to breast-feed there. By Dec. 30, more than 85,000 members had joined a Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”
If you’re not of the persuasion that sees private breastfeeding pictures as obscene, there are a few things you can do to take action. Maria Lavis has some suggestions on her blog:
Annoyed like me? Want to do something?
- Join this Facebook group/petition: Hey Facebook, nursing is not obscene
- Join this Facebook group/petition: Facebook, do not sell my pictures, I want my rights back!
- Write to Facebook at privacy AT facebook DOT com
- Bug newspapers to write more about this
- Blog about this
- Digg this post to show Facebook this is a real issue they need to handle
- If Facebook doesn’t change, take your and your kids patronage elsewhere
January 4th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I certainly don’t see breastfeeding pictures as obscene — I think they’re beautiful. I have to quibble with your use of the term “private” with relation to Facebook. Nothing on there is private, and as a general rule, if you wouldn’t want a potential employer seeing it, don’t put it on Facebook. (Yes, I know there are privacy settings, but there’s nothing stopping your friends from putting some of your photos on their profiles — and their privacy settings may not be as stringent.)
Either way, I definitely disagree with Facebook’s decision. I don’t think boobs are obscene at all, with or without a baby attached to them.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Oh, ALL usage of the term “private” with reference to Facebook is purely ironic. You can click the “put behind iron gates, in the vault below the bomb shelter” and any halfwit can still crack your security there. Look at how easily Paris Hilton’s FB was opened; all the URLs for pictures were formatted in the same way, so all anyone had to do was guess the suffix and POOF! Pix public.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Bikini triangle covers nipple, which society has determined is the “no view zone.”
Nursing baby covers nipple, which society has determined is the “no view zone.”
For some reason I can post as many pictures of myself in a itsy-bitsy bikini as I want, but not a picture of myself nursing an infant?
January 7th, 2009 at 3:21 am
Yep, so don’t even try it! THEY are watching!