Free the nipple: Facebook and Instagram told to overhaul ban on bare breasts | Hacker News Reader

Free the nipple: Facebook and Instagram told to overhaul ban on bare breasts

theguardian.com

38 pointssandebert56 comments

One of the reasons we can tell nipple bans are irrational is that no one is saying, "If I see nipples, it will harm me." It's always, "If someone else sees nipples, it will harm them." When folks try to police others nine times out of ten it's not actually to protect latter - rather it makes the former uncomfortable in ways they know won't hold up to scrutiny.

It's not a conspiracy, simply advertisers don't want to be associated with nipples and female nudity because according to their data and experience those ads don't convert (and generate negative press, but mostly don't convert)

And it's true, I mean would you ever remember a logo or an ad you saw on PornHub or YouPorn?

The PlayBoy magazine wasn't free, you had to subscribe to it because little money flowed into the business via ads.

To put it lightly, focus of the consumer in those moments is elsewhere, not the ad. Advertisers love space which is placed in-between 2 slices of engaging (but not sexually engaging content), possibly where the viewer doesn't know when the advertisement will end and their favorite content is coming back on.

That's the reason why SuperBowl ads and generally ads airing during live events such as NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL games are a favorite among brands

It sounds like we got different things from the article.

That part that stood out to me was

> The posts were flagged by users, then reviewed and removed by an AI system.

To me this says that we're talking about a system that involves people who are telegraphing their dislike of nipple content. I agree with you that advertisers may have reservations about the content, but in this story advertisers aren't mentioned, only users who dislike nipple content are. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but I can't see a connection between advertisers not wanting to be associated with the content in a way that causes people to report nipple pictures.

Remember that the US still has a rather large population of religious and otherwise extremely socially conservative people. These people are against uncovered breasts in general, and it makes them extremely angry. They also tend to be well organized, persistent, and have enough smart people to be a problem.

Pornhub being thrown off of credit card payment systems was mostly the doing of an anti-porn religious organization. That's what these brands are afraid of.

Conservatives bitching about "cancel culture" have NOTHING on the wrath of religious folks if you step outside their prescribed notions of the world. Remember, people BOMBED abortion clinics, like, not rarely either.

This is weird to me. I find that people arguing on behalf of others is way more valid than whining about themselves.

The reasoning is nonsense.

It's just about being safe for work.

As a man I can get away with a beach shot of me and a hypothetical son both without tops on. On my work desk.

My hypothetical wife and daughter? Not so much.

Yeah that's puritanism for ya. Where I live, it's technically legal for women to go topless anywhere men can. It would be interesting to test that as it applies to photographs in the workplace.

This is true for a large portion of USA citizens as well. The lower bound on this is >13% of women in the USA can be topless anywhere that men are allowed to be topless.

Purportedly, this includes the following jurisdictions:

   New York State 20200000
   Wyoming 576851
   Colorado 5773000
   Utah 3271000
   New Mexico 2117000
   Kansas 2937000
   Oklahoma 3959000
   Austin, TX 961855
   Asheville, NC 94000
   Colombus, OH 906528
   Eugene, OR 175000
   Portland, OR 641000
   D.C. 712800
   New Orleans, LA 377000

Problem is Facebook and Instagram are global entities.

And yet they don't censor women who aren't in hijab. Should you be using facebook and instagram at work? I know I don't.

Where do you think they should draw the line as a business case?

I see a pretty obvious line allowing women without a hijab but not what might be considered child porn (girls topless).

Unless you're suggesting that topless girls goes from fine as a baby to not okay as a teen to fine as an adult?

> Should you be using facebook and instagram at work?

I'm allowed to browse at work. But not watch what they consider pornographic.

The line between nudity and pornography is indeed blurry; in fact there is pornography out there without any nudity at all. I can go down to the beach (were it not the depths of winter, I guess) and see naked people of all ages and that's not pornographic or even sexual. I live in the luxury of not being responsible for one-size-fits-all policies to be applied world-wide.

So as a business case where would you draw the line?

Considering Facebook user demographic, countries its revenue comes from.

I get the feeling people are trying to use Facebook to enact some sort of societal change.

> So as a business case where would you draw the line?

I thought I addressed that: I'm grateful to not be in that position. Moreover, I do not think that it's a good thing for a single company to have consolidated power over the communications of the entire world as facebook has. If I were so situated, I would break them up.

A lot of current IG is NSFW. That's not the issue.

The issue is that allowing topless women will encourage even more of the porn industry to use IG as a lead generator. There's already a ton of that for OnlyFans.

That's not a moral problem for a rational person, but it's potentially a huge problem for advertisers. Fidelity doesn't want their ad directly above a nearly-nude woman in a leather bondage outfit.

Nah friend of mine got banned from insta cause she had some performance art with a nip visible.

It'd also make moderation of child porn harder tbh.

The problem with arguing/advocating on behalf of others is that you can arrive at a state that no one actually wants.

IE a group of friends wants to go to dinner, one suggests tacos even though they dislike tacos because they think that will make the group happy. Everyone agrees even though they hate tacos because they don't want to hurt the feelings of the suggestor.

This frequently leads to suboptimal outcomes.

And that's why they do it. It's a way of gaining apparent validity by expanding the group for whom you can claim harm.

It goes off the rails when it's only others for whom harm is claimed. That's what makes children such a common trope here. Children will (almost) never say "this harms me". Instead, people get to claim something on behalf of the children, without fear of contradiction. No child gets to say "Hey, I wouldn't mind seeing some boobies."

It's why Greta Thunberg caused such an uproar. She is a child, but got a platform to say, "Climate change harms me". It brought some credence to climate advocates who previously risked sounding like they were doing it "for the children" without the consent of any children.

How about people arguing on behalf of hypothetical / imaginary other people?

> It's always, "If someone else sees nipples, it will harm them."

... I find it more compelling to put it this way: "If we make [something currently seen as sexual] normal in public, it will harm society".

There isn't anything more magically sexual about the nipple than there was about the thigh. It's an arbitrary line in the sand. Culture/advertising has exposed the fact it's arbitrary by pushing up against it, but maybe it's just as sensible to argue that the line should move back towards being more modest than being less so.

There is a separate discussion about why women's norms are more restrictive than men's, but I think things have gotten more libertine across the board.

I find "harm society" much less compelling. It acts like a smoke grenade in discussions, filling up a lot of space and obscuring the topic.

The air can only be cleared by answering, "who?" and "which relations in society?" otherwise we're fighting clouds.

I been watching one youtuber and his streams playing The Witcher 3 game.

He has to censor the moments when he fights with certain beast, an Water Hag/Baba Wodna monstrosity. . Evil creature has a woman-like breast on display and hes seriously worried about getting demonetised by youtube for that....

Political correctness full on.

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Water_hag

That's not political correctness, it's Puritanism.

Do the puritans hate also men nipples ?

It's funny to me that we're all born with female nipples, mens' just don't develop mass behind them, and that's apparently what makes them NSFW. But even flat-chested women are NSFW, even though it's almost no different appearance-wise?

> mens' just don't develop mass behind them, and that's apparently what makes them NSFW

There are a lot of men lately with "mass" behind nipples which might be caused by the food (hormones ?).

It’s amusing when people complain about how some Islamic governments demand women cover their bodies and simultaneously demand women cover their breasts on largely Christian principles.

Nips are honestly just not that interesting to look at.

There is a golden middle way somewhere between "have everyone covered up head to toe in as many layers as possible" and "let's all walk around naked". Along which axis you prefer to be will differ from person to person. As far as I'm concerned people can wear whatever they want as long as they're fine with others looking at them like they grew a third head.

It is already pretty strange to walk around shirtless as a man in normal context. I’m pretty sure women being topless at the beach could become normative to the point of being uninteresting in the blink of an eye though.

Any gender based rules are prima facie discriminatory.

I'd be ok with not allowing male nipples to be shown.

How about a reverse ban where all fundamentalist religious bigots are banned instead?

> How about a reverse ban where all fundamentalist religious bigots are banned instead?

They rule the world. Even in some democracies (US, etc).

Maybe there could be a market for AR glasses that draw sweaters over topless people. Combined with smart internet filters who do the same for pictures and videos it would allow people to decide for themselves what they want or don't want to see without having to bother others. ...but then it may be used to hide advertisements and that would be bad for certain interests.

Well there is very likely a market for AR glasses that draw "toplessness" over clothed people ;)

Suprising how quickly policies can change when the transgender perspective is brought to bear on it.

Enough said.

We are in the decade of the transgender.

Wonder what the next decade holds.

We are in the Aeon of the child according to Crowley. Do with that what you will

I honestly have zero clue what this comment means. why are people expected to be familiar with some bloke named crowley? Whatever does aeon if the child mean? Are these tv show references?

My best guess is either these are tv show references or the way some people try to obscure obviously objectionable/wrong statements in obscure references for people “in the know”. But I have zero clue what the statements mean.

Or Was that comment posted in the wrong thread?

See the other comment, he is correct. Crowley believed that he was channeling knowledge from egyptian gods that would allow him to usher in the aeon of horus, which would be the aeon of the child. He believes we have been through eras of matriarchy and patriarchy and that we are entering the age of the child. My interpretation kf this is that this involves the subversion of the idea of objective truth, substituting it for a childlike naivete and selfishness that believes the world is created in the eye of the beholder.

What a weirdly specific prophetic message from Crowley. Anyone who knows anything about an "aeon" of children immediately thinks of the line from the Timaeus[1].

> O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children.

What's even more frustrating is that in the Timaeus, an Egyptian priest utters that line and that Crowley, channeling Aiwass ostensibly an Egyptian diety, really should have had this all sorted a bit more because it makes Crowley look like he's completely unaware of this fact.

Either way, given the rise and fall of Hellenism[2] in no way should a prophecy of an aeon of the child exclude that very elephant in the room.

1. Plat. Tim. 22b https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

2. Debatable whether anyone wants to argue our modern culture is a continuation or descendant of the Hellenism of antiquity.

Also that is a very interesting quote, thank you for this comment. I have some reading to do

I think Crowley cared very little about truth, he was trying to speak things into existance.

Aleister Crowley was an occultist who dealt in Western esotericism. So either you're into that kind of stuff, or know about it, or it's not really for you. And anyway, with a simple search for "Crowley", the first link was his Wikipedia entry with all this information, so it's not exactly like you had to go digging in the dark corners of some exotic private library to figure it out.

Example #N of a loud, coast-dwelling, white-collar minority overruling a silent majority.

Go to a shitty bar and find someone who doesn’t look like you and ask them if they think you should be able to post topless women unrestricted. Statistically the answer is no.

At many/most bars in these areas, the answer will be “yes”, and they may show you the background image on their phone with bare breasted women or will regale with stories about the “good ol’ days” with calendars at work that had bare-breasted women.

If you go to churches in these areas, the stated preference may be “no”, but many of them will be lying.

If you need evidence of these preferences, go to the infield of any NASCAR race.

Or go to any spring break location where young people from these areas go to spring break.

You will see more bare-breasted women than you can count at both of these places.

Coastal counties make up 40% of the US population. The myth of the "Average American" being some hick in Wyoming is just patently false.

Isn't the population sparseness in the United States heartland also the raison d'être for the Electoral College?

Anyway, speculating about what the majority of people think seems quite pointless as they themselves don't know.

At one point I’m sure you could have asked whether black people should be allowed to marry white people, and gotten the same answer. I’m not sure that’s a good argument.

I think it’s pretty crude to conflate the literal civil rights movement and the campaign to “free” female nipples.

However, I will point out that that change, while good and necessary, also happened over time. MLK won hearts and minds, he didn’t flip an algorithmic switch and decide for the population.

He largely did not win hearts and minds. What he did win was the court and a loud enough minority that politicians had to cave. When your cause can sign up an innumerable amount of clean dressed people to volunteer for mob attacks and imprisonment, society has to respect you lest these same committed souls decide dying for the cause might as well require enemies to the cause die as well. The Black Panthers and others had about reached that point, and the implicit threat that if society doesn’t create a true peace society doesn’t get peace was what created a civil rights victory.

MLK Jr. was among the most controversial and least liked members of the country at his death and throughout his campaign for civil rights. Most people would have described the civil rights campaign as flipping a legislative switch deciding for the population.

We are getting a little off topic, but… This isn’t what I was taught in school about MLK Jr. He was assassinated so obviously someone didn’t like him, but I always thought his movement was pretty instrumental on moving the needle and he was respected (if not liked) by white Americans. Googling around for a bit I could not seem to find reliable statistics on whether or not people supported him but it ranges anywhere from 45% to 70% of the population. Can you recommend a book on the topic or something? I’m actually curious now.

We are definitely off topic but since we are just leaving the MLK Jr. Holiday so hopefully the forum will indulge our sidebar.

I wish I had a good book for you. My friend probably has six, I may ask him for a recommendation later. There’s a growing movement that says nonviolent actors received too much of the credit for the Civil rights movement, with MLK Jr in particular getting outsized accolades. Giving him credit was very convenient as he was dead and could not directly condemn the current conditions.

40-60% is probably about right for general support for civil rights, but with major caveats. For example, 58% of people supported the Civil Rights Act but only 19% wanted it to be vigorously enforced [0]. So you see for example a backlash to school bussing, NYC schools not being integrated for decades after civil rights, etc. Northerners mostly supported civil rights so long as it only impacted those backwards Southerners but were not ready for real integration. Support for interracial marriage did not reach above 50% approval until in the 1990s despite being allowed nationally by the Supreme Court in 1967. That’s a good example IMO of how civil rights bypassed the slow change in opinion via the courts.

The Harris poll [1] near his death had him at around 75% disapproval and only 50% black approval. Critically this was after he pivoted from a civil rights focus towards anti-war and anti-poverty (both in his mind an obvious extension of the civil rights movement - others did not agree).

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/16/50-years-ag... [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-kin...

Thanks for the links!

> I think it’s pretty crude to conflate the literal civil rights movement and the campaign to “free” female nipples.

I agree it's a bit of a low-brow comparison. But nonetheless I think the comparison is apt.

Pure speculation? Folks are smarter than that as a rule. They'd comment on how that would be cool, then how it would affect kids, then whether kids really care and so on. You know, real thoughtful conversation and not just name-calling.

Yes, what I posted was definitely just thoughtless name-calling, not in any way a reflection of my experience or any known facts. I’m so glad we have knowledgeable experts like you, high-brow academic nobles whose comments are here to educate with quality science. Thank you for constructing a quality argument and citing your sources. You’re really raising the bar for discussion on HN! Keep it up!

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