‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram
nypost.com
nypost.com
> “[Content] will only be removed from Facebook and Instagram if it contains a sexual emoji alongside an implicit or indirect ask for nude imagery, sex or sexual partners, or sex chat conversations”
> “We aren’t taking action on simply the emojis.”
> Nude photos where emojis cover genitalia, butts or female nipples are also now formally not allowed
EDIT: I hope people reading my post understand the difference between explaining vs. endorsing another party's reasoning.
That said, I think it's silly. They're a technology company that should be able to come up with a technical solution. Twitter handles nudity just fine.
Similarly they seem to allow people to post comments like "why don't you use your guns to kill yourself" and "I hope you f*cking die" which are actual comments I've had when commenting on posts where the second amendment is being attacked, report them, and get facebook telling me an hour or days later that they did not violate community standards. I even had some in my messenger inbox before and got the blah blah blah it's ok, you can block them if you want message.
You realize that if the post is removed, that "seeing what will happen" has a real consequence for the poster, right? If feel like that's even worse than reporting it because you actually believe it's objectionable.
One I reported was a woman doing duck lips, in a few second video lip, with one breast completely bare and the other mostly exposed with her child appearing to be wholly disinterested in feeding while she actively squeezed her breasts together with her inner upper arms and rotated back and forth to showcase them. Reported it, thousands of likes and even more comments, did not violate community standards and allowed to remain. Literally came up, shared by someone, while I was sitting at church waiting for a meeting to start. It was blatantly obvious she was just finding a way to show her breasts off, I feel no remorse for reporting her post, especially when her blatantly showing her breasts off ended up being 'fine' to Facebook.
More like even better. Glad to see a website exercising critical thinking.
> Are a transgender person's nipples allowed, or not?
Is it sexually suggestive? Then no.
> A gender-neutral standard would be better.
Well that's a policy ignorant of reality.
So "critical thinking" to you means rejecting the notion of gender being anything but binary and static, despite scientific evidence to the contrary? Interesting definition you've got there.
> Is it sexually suggestive?
Nope, no subjective opinions or controversial judgment calls there.
> that's a policy ignorant of reality.
It's a policy that doesn't allow neanderthals to deny others' reality, and IMO the fact that it makes those neanderthals uncomfortable is a bonus.
Just because one of the sexes is treated differently in some way doesn't make something necessarily sexism.
It's just that female nipples are considered sensual while men nipples aren't. That's because female nipples are indeed sensual (and play a special role in reproduction and human sexual selection) whereas male nipples not so much.
(Sure, some men like to have their nipples rubbed, kissed, etc, and some women enjoy them. But you can find some percentage of people who enjoy anything, including sexually aroused by armpits, so that's not really an argument. Statistically, males enjoy female breasts/nipples sexually far more than women enjoy male breasts/nipples, hence they were considered more sexually explicit).
In the end, though, is it arbitrary? Yes, but so is considering dicks and testicles and pussies "bad" and sensual, and I don't see many people complaining they can't show their dick/pussy on Facebook (whereas, they should probably complain about that too).
Rationally speaking, without the baggage of culture, there's nothing special about dicks and pussies other hands and faces and toes.
Within the baggage of culture, however, they're in a different class, a class that female nipples happen to be also considered to belong to but male nipples not. But it's not like both men and women don't have several body parts considered censor-worthy. Woman having one more is not based on sexism (if that was the case, only women would have "shameful" body parts to hide and men would be able to display their dicks and balls and asses around), it's based on what culture considers sensual.
That is a pretty good definition of puritanism..
But it is Facebook catering to the puritanism of the parents for marketing purposes.
Maybe this is where the American (Facebook) and European (myself) cultures differ but here it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be topless in much the same way as how it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to be topless.
Public nudity is very much the exception globally not the rule. But it's interesting what selective stuff people give the US credit.
Maybe a more accurate description might be: countries predominantly atheist verses countries which are not.
Regardless of you want to define it, a female nipple is still no more offensive than a male one.
To take a direct example, Sweden we used to censor violence, even animated violence, while nudity was perfectly acceptable. There were even a sex-education program on national TV broadcast during primer hours. Then the broadcast monopoly was eroded and a very noticeable Americanization occurred culturally. Censoring violence became unpopular and censoring nudity became more common.
Old Swedish movies often included full frontal nudity, either as just a representation of normal life activity like swimming in the ocean, bathing in a sauna, or as a bit of a joke between characters. There were even discussing of banning a few of those movies because they included nude children. A common reaction to old Swedish movies is that "we had a different cultural view about nudity", but what is also noticeable is the lack of any American culture in the same movies.
https://fstoppers.com/originals/instagrammers-fight-censorsh...
People were censoring female nipples with male ones since that's apparently more appropriate.
I was worried Facebook's contractors were reading the conversations with my wife! I'm sure glad to know that Facebook is reading them just to make sure an emoji isn't used inappropriately! /s
Facebook users play in Facebook's house for "free", so they live by the owner's rules which can change on a whim.
My best bet is a certain generation of people in the US who grew up shielded and learning to react with outrage and emotional breakdowns to absolutely anything outside their narrow comfort zone.
Not even their children, who grew up with access to the internet and thus unfiltered humanity, can take them serious on these issues.
But I guess it makes someone happy and it's too late to change some people anyways. This restriction doesn't really impair anyone fundamental rights and it's a minor annoyance at worst. What gives?
> My guess is they must be doing this in order to help protect women from sexual harassment.
This is a possibility. Somehow I doubt this will make any difference though. You don't stop creeps by taking away a random thing when there's millions of other ways.
>Men's inboxes just aren't constantly getting filled with unsolicited nudes, and those that are received rarely cause men to feel concerned that it could lead to real aggravated sexual assault.
I have several drag queen friends and friends that work/perform in gay clubs, simply commenting on their posts causes me to get 1-2 unsolicited dick picks (or worse, spread cheeks for example) a month on average from friends of theirs or people that simply follow them. I am not gay, I am not interested in penises, I did not ask for them. I report every single one.
But if you add an eggplant emoji... that's it! You crossed the line. Facebook cannot tolerate that. Oh no. Not that.
I.e. if you send eggplant to your GF via chat, and she does not report you, it's fine. But if she receives private eggplant sex message from some rando and she report him, that should count as violation.
Murder simulators? Yay! Violence on film? Wow, awesome! A drawing of a gun? WOAH HOLD ON WAIT A MINUTE
Makes nothing but sense.
The sterilized world you want to live in is not necessarily the one that everyone else wants to live in.
The two aren’t even remotely equatable.
As a gun owning American with MANY firearms, never once have I bought one thinking "gee golly, I can't wait to kills me somes peoples with this here gun" I go "hey this would be great for hunting, hey this one would be great for taking to the range, hey this is like the one my late father first took me shooting with, hey this one is just neat mechanically because the entire cylinder of this nagant revolver slides forward and it has this comically long hammer".
I have never shot anyone, I have never wanted to shoot anyone, I've never drawn a weapon in aggression.
If you think a gun is a murder machine, yes you should never own one. I, however, see them as a functional tool for providing food for my table and as a recreational device. You go take your fancy vacations and I'll drive 10 miles down the road to the range to shoot targets with series of circles.
I mean when was the last time you killed a deer with a skirt?
Honestly, I get you love your guns, but at least be rational about the arguments you’re making. A gun and a skirt are not in any way even remotely equatable yet gun owners frequently make dumbass comments like that rather than just saying “yeah, I know they’re dangerous weapons designed to kill but I try and exercise some common sense and I enjoy firing them”. At least that would be an honest opinion.
I love mechanical devices that have multiple functions.
> but at least be rational about the arguments you’re making.
I am. Guns do not kill people, unhinged people kill people.
First let's consider that there are hundreds of millions of firearms in the United States, some estimates in fact put the number at being higher than the number of people. How do you propose to get 100% of those surrendered? More importantly, how do you propose to compensate people for turning them in? Firearms in functional condition can range from 100$ to tens of thousands of dollars for legally held fully automatic and antique firearms. I'd say the average resale value per firearm in my collection, and I only make 36k a year, is in the 400$ range.
Now let's look at some numbers.
"In 2017, gun deaths reached their highest level since 1968 with 39,773 deaths by firearm, of which 23,854 were by suicide and 14,542 were homicides." [1] the missing 1,377 were likely accidents and law enforcement-involved shootings.
IN 2017, automobile accidents killed 37,133 persons. [2] This figure almost certainly does not include suicide via exhaust either, making cars almost as dangerous IF NOT more responsible for death than firearms. If you factor in property damage/losses...
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. [3] yet cigarettes are sold in every state legally to persons as young as 18. If you buy your cigarettes from a legal dealer, you don't need to pass a background check like you do if you buy from a business selling firearms as they have to have an FFL which requires a background check, you don't need to take a safety course for cigarettes yet many states require some sort of NRA or other safety course to obtain a license to carry, if you're a felon you can buy cigarettes but you can not legally buy a firearm from an FFL,
Or should we look into prescribed opiates?
How about heart disease? It kills 647k in the US annually [4], do we outlaw fast food, animal products, vegetable oil, refined sugar? I mean, we have medical evidence that repeatedly shows that animal proteins/omega 6 fat imbalances/excessive sugar/sugar in absence of fiber/etc cause all sorts of things like inflammatory responses, arterial calcification, arterial blockage etc.
What about diabetes at more than 80k deaths in the United States annually [4]? Do we make sugary snacks and soda illegal given the former is often detrimental to our health, overly dense calorically and often largely (if not wholly lacking in meaningful micronutrients)? And soda, diet sodas are just somewhat acidic empty calories and non-diet sodas are full of sugar and sodium which can help promote diabetes. I mean, sure people can enjoy them in moderation with minimal health impact just like the vast majority of firearm owners don't commit acts of violence but they're clearly not good for us...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta... with the cited source in the wiki entry being a CNN article where they replicated another source's claims.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...
[4] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
But yes, let’s look at the stats. America is the only developed country which has looked at said stats and not though “gee, wouldn’t it be smart to have gun control.” Australia, the UK, Northern Europe; they all went through the same statistics as yourself and realised gun control was needed.
Anyway, it’s a highly divisive topic (at least in America anyway. In Europe and Australia it’s pretty one sided) and I think we’ve reached a natural impasse so I begrudgingly concede that we might just need to agree to disagree.
It makes sense that the latter cannot be sold in shops but the former could still easily be used in the place of the latter. Which is why the U.K. says anything carried around the streets with the intent to cause harm is considered the same. This means if you’re carrying a knife without a good reason, that’s an offence.
It’s a sane distinction imo. But the problem with guns is there literally is no reason to carry them around the streets. Sure we do actually have guns (one of my friends is into clay pidgin shooting) but the way those shotguns are stored and transported is very different in the U.K.
Having gun control doesn’t mean you have to give up all of your guns without exception; it just means there are enough hurdles that people don’t accidentally kill their own family and nut jobs can’t easily get hold of them. And it works too, gun crime in the U.K. dropped massively when we tightened gun control laws.
The issue we have now is with knife crime, thankfully that causes significantly fewer deaths than gun crime did but it’s still a problem; not just in the sense that it’s happening but also because it’s a harder problem to solve (what with kitchen knives actually being an essential utensil).
California law enforcement has said in the past that non-pneumatic potato guns with bores wider than 0.6 inches are "destructive devices" (possession is a felony). I don't know if that definition has been tested in court, but I wouldn't want to be the test case.
In Oregon they're considered firearms (even pneumatic ones). Can't possess them if you're a felon and if you shoot them somewhere you're not supposed to (like your own yard in some cities) you can get hit with the same charges you'd get for firing a real gun.
[1] https://cdn.shoplightspeed.com/shops/602483/files/527908/768...
It looks like a beautiful place, and there's got to be a lot more to it than just Portland - I mean there's the entire eastern half of the state...
How many times do you hear about school “skirtings” where a disgruntled teenager kills a dozen peers with his skirt?
I’m honestly flabbergasted that intelligent people would make such obviously stupid comments as you’ve made to support something that clearly shouldn’t be as widely acceptable as it currently is.
Next you’ll be defending nukes saying everyone should have them because “anything is dangerous in the wrong hands”. The line has to be drawn somewhere and the obvious place to draw that is “stuff that’s purpose is to kill people” should be on the wrong side of that line. Whichever way you decide to perform your logic gymnastics, guns still fall into the category of “this really shouldn’t be as accessible as a skirt”.
And your claim about something whose purpose is to kill people, it's ridiculous to allow people to sell a murder skirt. The only purpose of knives is to kill people, and we allow those to be as available as the average skirt as well.
“Murder skirt”? I hope future generations read this thread back as a reminder of how dumb the pro-gun arguments got before people eventually came to their senses and banned them.
> The only purpose of knives is to kill people,
Bullshit. I’d be interested do see you butter toast, slice a sandwich, chop carrots or calve a Christmas turkey without a knife.
Some knifes are designed specifically to kill people, and those knifes shouldn’t be available either (in fact in the UK there are rules in place to say you’re not allowed to wonder the streets with kitchen knives).
> We allow [knives] to be as available as the average skirt as well.
You might but that’s not actually the case in most other developed countries.
Realistically, a pair of golf clubs would be more dangerous in trained hands than whole swaths of competition and small varmint guns.
This is the problem with society at large - rather than seek to understand gun culture, you dismiss it as being all about killing people, and that couldn't be farther from the truth.
America being a world power is factual but not as directly pertinent as other issues. What is pertinent is that America has significantly more diversity than other developed nations. More importantly, there is significant cultural tension between many different groups.
Finally, guns have legitimate uses, and are by-and-large used by legitimate people. Per FBI statistics [0], significantly more people were killed in 2016 by knives or alike weapons, whereas 374 deaths by rifle. Certainly handguns represent a larger number, but the current push is against so-called "assault rifles" which are, needless to say, categorized as "rifles" in the referenced data. Is a knife an in-appropriate symbol?
[0]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
From the GP, that is demonstrably false. Look at German citizenry. They have equal or more rights than American citizens do.
> the current flag ship of human progress.
Again, this is complete bullshit. Many other nations have better healthcare, stronger privacy protections, better educational systems, more efficient transit systems, higher air quality, lower rates of incarceration. I could go on and on. America is not "the current flagship of human progress"
> So you cannot say that what ‘works’ for some fly by night westernized counties will work for the current flag ship of human progress.
What is a 'fly-by-night westernized country'? The fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's an ignorant, nationalistic dig at other "Western coutnries" based on nothing at all.
> There is no other nation in the world which compares to the US
False. Nordic countries have better healthcare, a cleaner environment, better education, better transit, more walkable cities. The EU as a whole has stronger privacy protections than the US. There are MANY ways to compare countries to the US, and, more often than not, when compared to other "western coutnries", the US comes out behind.
> Look at German citizenry. They have equal or more rights than American[s].
Source? I'd say Americans are more free. I don't consider "positive rights" to increase liberty; you can't make one more free by requiring another to do something for him to fulfill his freedom. Doctors, houses, etc. are not rights.
> better healthcare
No, there is _more_ healthcare. Quality, access, and cost are the iron triangle of medicine; pick two. We picked quality and price, and those were good choices. Germany picked universality and cost; they traded some of that cost to the tax payers, and got some quality, but most cutting-edge medical research is in America.
> better educational systems
Before college, probably yes. I agree we should give fewer hand-outs and allocate more to education.
> fly-by-night
I didn't use those words; please don't claim I did. It weakens your argument.
> Nordic countries have better healthcare
Better is subjective; see iron triangle.
> a cleaner environment
Norway, for instance, makes a huge amount of money off Statoil (now Equinor). They have small population sizes relative to natural resources. This means they export things that pollute and dump that pollution elsewhere. Though Equinor is trying to sequester carbon, it's nowhere near total output and doesn't account for the by-products of O&G production. It is also only from part of one operation, and only removing CO2 from natural gas. Equinor also owned stakes in oil sands, which are absolutely horrible for the environment.
Why do I bring this up? To point out that many nordic nations sell resources to others, mine resources in other nations, etc. They rely on negative externalities to pay for their extravagant welfare states. According to the wikipedia article, "Economy of Norway": "Norway's modern manufacturing and welfare system rely on a financial reserve produced by exploitation of natural resources, particularly North Sea oil." (there are four cited sources).
> better transit
Transit is not a right. America is significantly larger.
> more walkable cities
That's a right? Also, their cities are significantly smaller.
> stronger privacy protections
The EU takes the fundamentally-paternalistic attitude that consumers aren't smart enough to protect their own data, and that government must fill that role for them. I disagree; it's condescending and wrong.
> more often than not, when compared to other "western coutnries", the US comes out behind.
How do you compare that? As you said, many different ways. I'm getting the sense the things you value in your comparison constitute zero percent of mine.
Many of America's issues come from being a large and very diverse nation. Nordic nations have small, homogeneous populations with little unrest. Very easy to govern a nation, keep crime rates low, etc. that way. Nothing comes without a cost. Some nations hide costs better than others. Some kick them down the road.
This phrase is commonly used as though it were most of the global population or economy or something.
Yet the UK has some crazy knife laws (and self-defense laws for that matter, I'd hate to have to defend myself in the UK) because when people couldn't get access to firearms easily knife crimes went up.
I mean, 2 years ago they had someone drive into a crowd of people and then hop out and start stabbing/slashing
>The attackers were armed with 12-inch (30 cm) kitchen knives with ceramic blades, which they tied to their wrists with leather straps. They also prepared fake explosive belts by wrapping water bottles in grey tape
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2017_London_Bridge_attack
In 2014 in China 171 people were stabbed/slashed in a single attack at a railway station, 31 people died. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2014_Kunming_attack
Since 1949 only 3 mass shootings have had higherdeath counts in the United States than the Kunming incident - the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 at 58 dead, Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016 at 49 dead and the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 at 32 people.
Most people have a really, really difficult time conceptualizing that an individual might be as legitimate as a group of individuals (government) when it comes to rights, including the right to employ a violent defense.
Side note, does HN not support non-ASCII characters? It looks like the actual emoji was stripped from my comment
I agree with your frustration that an eggplant is considered more dangerous to society than a gun.
They don't want users to have the same plausible deniability when sharing a cartoon wiener that they had when adding a cartoon wiener as an option. And honestly, it is probably for the better that sexual harassment via eggplant is now explicitly called out in the TOS.
I don't expect much enforcement of this.
Edit: Wow, the eggplant lobby found my post. To be clear, I'm not against the eggplant emoji, or its sexual connotations, but I am convinced that it gets used exactly the way its designers expected it to be used.
Why police content, especially this content that seems like a total non-issue, when they’re in the middle of a giant PR campaign trying to convince users they shouldn’t police content any content?
I’ve never once heard someone complain about emoji sexual innuendo and if Facebook’s motives are to stop sexual harassment that might be the most half-hearted attempt in history. Someone who wants to sexually harass a person via Facebook isn’t going to be deterred because they might get reported (and then... presumably nothing?) for sending an emoji.
No matter Facebook’s end goal, it seems like an odd strategy.
I for one am still waiting with bated breath for the "eggplant parm" emoji.
Zuck is quite the eggplant head.
In a former life I've even seen but I've seen friends' burlesque posters/flyers with cartoon nudity be removed if they don't have pasties drawn on nipples or the nipples airbrushed (yet throw a baroque painting with far more detail/realism up and it's ok) out and numerous performers that have had actual photographs of them removed even when they DID have pasties on.
Seriously, women wearing amply sized pasties has been a no-go "violating community standards" but you could post something like Reubens' The Judgement of Paris and that's fine because it's a 17th century painting worth mind boggling amounts of money and is tasteful art.
Facebook reaaalllly needs to get consistent with what they do or do not allow.