Facebook Photo Rules Leaked
Uploading a picture to Facebook comes with some responsibility. Primarily you've got to always ask if it conforms to Facebook's picture rules. Hard to follow those rules when they don't tell you what they are.
Until now, users have been forced to rely on Facebook’s relatively vague community standards to judge what it deems acceptable. On graphic content, the public page says "while we are a platform for sharing events that take place in your life and around the world, any inappropriately graphic content will be removed when found on the site."
A former Facebook moderator has come forward with details we presumed but are still amusing, if not disturbing to know.
A document given to the staff of one third party content moderation firm tells them to delete “any obvious sexual activity, even if naked parts are hidden from view”. Meanwhile “deep flesh wounds are ok to show; excessive blood is ok to show” and “crushed heads, limbs, etc are ok as long as no insides are showing”.
“Slurs or racial comments of any kind” should be deleted, it says, but “humor overrules hate speech UNLESS slurs are used or humor is not evident”, meaning that comments reported to Facebook as hate speech should remain online if they are judged to be in jest and do not include racial slurs.
The rules are used by the third party firm to screen photographs, text and videos that have been “flagged” by one of Facebook’s 850 million users.
The leaked rules for moderators are much more specific. For example, images of “urine, feces, vomit, semen and ear wax” are banned, but images of "snot" are allowed, as are “cartoon feces, urine and spit”.
Meanwhile depictions of illegal drug use should be deleted, moderators are told, except marijuana, “unless context is clear that the poster is selling/buying/growing”.
The rules are a little more liberal than I presumed!
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