Sunday, October 27, 2013

Facebook Where Art Thou Priorities?

This story is old news by now but we are just getting around to commenting about it (hey it's hard to keep up when you run with webbed feet. )

Last week Facebook announced that they were reversing their policy and would allow the posting of such videos as the public beheading of a woman in Mexico.  The company reasoned that the videos were intended to foster dialogue against human rights abuses and that it was not glorifying violence or making a spectacle of it. The Platypus wouldn't know as we declined to seek out the video. You can read one news story about this at Facebook OK's Beheading Video but not Nudity .

Here's what we don't get: In the same announcement Facebook "assured" the public that they would continue to ban nude images... including breast feeding mothers if the images triggered complaints.  So all those 13 year olds who are now free to post public information about their private lives per yet another Facebook change in policy will, at LEAST be spared seeing how babies are fed. I mean, what would you find more troubling for today's youth?  A bare breast or a live execution by axe or sword?

Facebook attempted to explain itself by saying, "it's because we get complaints about nudity," but the explanation only made things sound more strange.  Did no one complain about the beheading live? Were women empowered by seeing a woman treated like that as opposed to sunning on a beach?  Do they fear anti nudity foes more than officials from countries who, we understand, did raise objection to these developments?

We won't really try to argue the speech and political value of a live killing.  As we said, we didn't see it and do not wish to see it.  All we're saying is that a bare breast or tush never hurt anyone. And we can't understand why Mr. Zuckerberg's tower of Babel can't acknowledge that.

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