Facebook: Be More Transparent About Your Removal Policies
- da: Care2.com
- destinatario: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder and CEO
There have been a number of instances recently where Facebook has taken content down, citing it as a violation of their terms of service.
The most recent incident included the removal of a benign photo of a gay couple kissing. (To their credit: the decision to remove this photo was later revoked.) Other examples include classic works of art with partial nudity and ads for a legalize marijuana campaign that included a photo of a marijuana leaf.
Facebook's policing techniques are arbitrary and easily interpreted as censorship. At the very least, they need to make their terms of service crystal clear and enforce the specific terms instead of relying on the opinions of their employees as to what is considered offensive.
Tell Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg that you want Facebook to be more transparent. Tell him to flesh out and clarify their terms of service. Otherwise, they will have constant cases of censorship on their hands.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
I have read about many cases of censorship on Facebook lately. I appreciate that many of these were later settled, usually with the member being allowed to post the content afterall. But the fact that users are being threatened with removal for photos of gay men kissing and pieces of art that include the female body is troubling.
The main issue here is that the terms of service are not clear enough. If your employees are going to be removing posts based on their idea of what is offensive, there will always be a multitude of censorship cases. If you were to clarify your terms of service, at least the community could express their thoughts about them, and decide whether or not to post something based on that.
The more specific your terms of service, the more guidance members will have about what they can and can't post. But a gay kiss and a marijuana leaf are hardly offensive, and the Facebook community wants to be assured that they will not be unfairly censored.
Thank you for your time.
