Triple J morning hosts Ben and Liam have been chastised by Facebook for posting a cheeky pic in support of agricultural industry mental health initiative The Naked Farmer.
The Naked Farmer draws attention to issues of mental health among those in agriculture by collecting nude shots of farmers and other agricultural workers, with the slogan, “It takes as much guts to take your clothes off for a photo as it takes to talk about mental health issues“.
So far they’ve released and sold out of a 2018 calendar and are about to set out on an Australia-wide tour in support of Aussie farmers’ mental health. It’s a pretty cool movement, considering farmers are appallingly overrepresented in suicide statistics in Australia.
Ben & Liam had The Naked Farmer founder Ben Brooksby on their show a couple days ago, and in support of the cause, stripped down to their cork hats and watering cans for the Insta page.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkCdHLVgl3O/?taken-by=the.naked.farmer
All fun and games in the name of a good cause, one would think – unless you’re Facebook, in which case you promptly delete the photo.
The duo’s management team attempted to publish the pic as a sponsored post, prompting Facebook to deny the ad and delete the image, saying it “doesn’t follow our Advertising Policies by featuring an image containing excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content.”
They also (somewhat snobbishly) suggested that the hosts could fix the issue by “using content that focuses on your product or service in a non-sexual manner“.
I suppose some people would find the image of Ben and Liam straddling buckets of hay titillating; maybe one of those people works in Facebook’s censorship department, and, faced with an unexpected wave of horniness, was forced to remove said image. Or maybe they’ve got the anti-fun robots on the job again. Either way: weird.
As for Ben and Liam, they’ve told news.com.au that they’re a little perplexed at the decision, with Liam saying:
I never thought such a big watering can could get you banned from Facebook. I know I’ve got a bit of a sloppy rig but I didn’t think it was that offensive.
