Facebook is no stranger to a little controversy after repeatedly being battered with privacy claims, hack attempts and censorship issues. This week’s story relates to the latter after a photograph of two actors kissing was deemed offensive and was removed by Facebook moderators.
The user in question had uploaded the image of the Eastenders duo kissing and the Facebook team deemed this to be offensive and promptly removed it, they also felt it necessary to direct the user to a warning page with guidelines on appropriate content. This prompted swift action from Gay rights groups who demanded an explanation.
The actual ‘warning page’ explained to the gentleman “contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content” is not allowed on Facebook and if you look at the picture we can understand why the user felt aggrieved.
After receiving a variety of complaints the moderation team decided that they had indeed made a mistake, according the Mail they said “The photo in question does not violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and was removed in error. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Interestingly and perhaps embarrassingly for Facebook the picture was used just last week to spearhead an event against homophobia, the event has left the social networking site with egg on its face although we are sure something even more shocking will be along shortly.
