Facebook! Come for the banal daily coming and goings of your vaguely amicable group of ‘friends’; stay for the permissible sharing of snuff films brazenly showing decapitation <3.
In news that is fairly shocking for anybody that prefers seeing skulls attached to necks, Facebook has lifted a ban they imposed earlier this year on sharing videos that document and display decapitations. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, facebook banned graphic violence while it “examined its policy in the wake of complaints about certain images posted on the website.” The BBC reports of the ensuing outrage that one video shared last week, showing a masked man killing a woman, now comply with their terms of use as “appropriate”.
Facebook allowing graphic content to spread wildly, while insisting that even a cartoon nipple is too offensive, too NSFW, presents an alarmingly skewed perspective of what is deemed acceptable in the unfortunate cesspit that is social networking. However, Facebook has defended their move by saying that only those videos that are used to “condemn” violent actions will be acceptable; while, “Sharing any graphic content for sadistic pleasure is prohibited.”
Sure – condemning violence and allowing keyboard warriors to type disapproving nothings to hollow ears may seem like a harmless idea, but it’s surely an outcome that could be just as easily achieved with a SFW poster, campaign, video, or hell – logical conversation. What’s unfortunate about the idealism imposed by facebook is that it will undoubtedly do more harm than good. As the Irish-branch executive of the suicide prevention organization Yellow Ribbon Arthur Cassidy told the BBC, “It only takes seconds of exposure to such graphic material to leave a
permanent trace – particularly in a young person’s mind…The more graphic and colourful the material is, the more psychologically destructive it becomes.”
All eyes on Zuck as his 1.15 billion users can’t post a photo of a mother breastfeeding in photos “that show a fully exposed breast where the child is not actively engaged in nursing,” but can share videos of a head, similarly, not actively engaging with the rest of its body. Happy Tuesday.
Via SMH.
