News
and Analysis

Onlinecensorship.org, for me, was about drawing attention to how social media censorship disproportionately affects marginalized communities. The communities that could most benefit from protected spaces online are being excluded from participation.

Of course we should be able to use social networks to protest against puritanical views about women’s bodies. And we need to defy the idea that the only acceptable images of women are those selected to suit the male gaze, or that men (or tech firms!) can be the ones to decide whether our nipples are sexual or not.

“Having not received a report we aren't sure which Facebook community standard we violated, though I presume the fact we are swearing, wearing latex gloves and suggestively fondling fruit may have something to do with it. I'm not here to say we didn't break any rules; indeed, I don't know if we did because I didn't get an explanation. The thing is, the rules are unreasonable, and inconsistently policed.”

...before this when content was removed from Facebook users got a notice saying it had been flagged as inappropriate or that it somehow violated terms of service, indicating that the takedown came from another user’s report. Location-based blocking of videos and content for political reasons has usually come from the government via DNS-based blocking or similar practices, never from social media companies themselves.

If social media companies control both the medium and the message—without oversight or transparency—they take the leap from a being a ‘walled garden’ to a selectively clear-cut forest.

Facebook content guidelines are indicative of a normative perspective on women that is simultaneously both sanitized and sexualized.