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Comment by sfaf | Hacker News Reader

Do you remember the super bowl janet jackson fiasco? There were millions of people outraged by an accident and it almost wrecked her career. It's issue like this that mean that Facebook has to build aggressive adult filters that will have false positives. Because frankly the cost of a false negative is much much bigger than a false positive.

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I watched that Superbowl half-time show with my two young at the time children. What I remember was that although I barely noticed the one or two seconds of exposed nipple, I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to explain the need for the erectile dysfunction medicine which was being advertised later in the show.

The K-Y commercials they were running scared me in that regard. I was ready with the "Ask me again in 10 years". They have to advertise too.

Her nipple ring was pretty cool. My girlfriend got one like it not long after.

That was the most hilarious outcry in the history of my life and people over here still joke about nipple-gate - and how utterly, utterly confusing the whole reaction was.

In other words: I'd say there were an order of more millions of people amused about the outcome.

Now here's the thing: Mocking other people's morality isn't going to help here, I understand that. Giggling has no place in this debate.

But .. we're talking in a specific context here. Facebook. The company that wants to impersonate The Internet™. If they adopt the morality of their home country, then their rules are going to be absolutely insane in the rest of the world.

Morality isn't being defined by Facebook, nor by the US. It's a personal choice. And while 'no pornography' is an understandable business choice, 'breasts are the devil' or 'let us pretend that no human has nipples' is somewhere between hilarious and stupid if you extend that beyond a certain demographic.

The correct method of resolving this historico-religious female-breast-shaming is for all famous women to immediately cease wearing any type of clothing that covers the breasts. Weather permitting.

And for men to get around topless in solidarity.

Millions? the FCC said there were 540,000 complaints from Americans[1] of which 65,000 came from the Parents Television Council[2]. The media cared more than the people.

Heck, I wonder if we polled on it, how many think MTV's response was the bigger problem.

1) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/2005-01-20-bowl-cover_x... from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime-sh...

2) I'll save my commentary on them for another time

I bet more people were offended than just those who filed complaints. So millions seems like a reasonable number.

That's something completely different though.

For one thing you can't really compare an act that's purely entertainment to a video that could theoretically save someone's life. It just doesn't have as much value.

Secondly, what Jackson did is against the law, which wasn't the case for the FB video. Public airwaves and all that.

And lastly, if you think that was an accident I have a bridge to sell you.

I agree about the adult filters. Companies like Facebook, youtube, and Twitter can't hire people to look at every single video. They don't have the margins.

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