Facebook's rules on nudity exposed

The question over Facebook nudity is raised again after a French court ruled an art teacher can sue after he was suspended from his Facebook account.

WHAT ARE FACEBOOK'S RULES FOR POSTING NUDE IMAGES?

BREASTFEEDING - Breastfeeding pictures were the subject of controversy for years. Breastfeeding mums protested when images were pulled. In 2009 11,000 people staged a virtual "nurse-in", replacing their profile photos with nursing ones. It's not clear when Facebook's policy changed internally, but about two years ago the policy wording changed to specifically allow photos of nursing mothers.

MASTECTOMY PHOTOS - In 2013 more than 20,000 people signed an online petition, led by photographer David Jay and breast-cancer survivor Ann Marie Giannino-Otis, urging Facebook not to ban mastectomy images. Facebook responded with an official policy that permits most mastectomy photos. Giannino-Otis said on Friday that while the policy change helped, many mastectomy photos are still flagged by other users and removed by Facebook.

BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY - In 2011 Facebook apologised for disabling the account of an Iowa photographer who posted shots of a friend and her newborn moments after birth; the images partially showed her friend's breasts, but not her nipples. Laura Eckert's photography business, New Creation Photography & Design, specialises in pictures of pregnant women and the first moments of a baby's life. Facebook emailed Eckert to apologise and say that disabling the account had been in error.

ARTWORK - Facebook's policy allows "photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures". Yet many users have run into trouble after posting art containing nudity. Frederic Durand-Baissas, a teacher whose account was suspended, had posted Gustave Courbet's 1866 nude painting, The Origin of the World. Artist Jerry Saltz said in a column for New York magazine's Vulture blog that he lost his account after posting graphic images from medieval art. And in January a Facebook account for the Christopher Stout gallery in New York was suspended after posting an image of an artist sitting topless on a toilet.


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Source: AAP



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