My good friend, Nicole, woke up the other morning and found her facebook account had been disabled, this also meant her business page was not accessible. Being an at home mother, this business is something she has put a lot of effort into and relies on for entertainment and a little extra spending money.
At 4am, Thursday 27th May 2010, she received 4 emails about some of her photo's being reported by users as 'inappropriate or in some way offensive'. By 4:15am her account was disabled.
She wasn't even given an opportunity to appeal, or any warning that the account was to be disabled. She's working on the theory, at the moment, that a rival 'at home' business woman, whom Nicole has had some issue with as she appears to be copying Nicole's product, has reported her photo's out of spite - in order to get her kicked off facebook and be left the only person selling these items.
I think this policy of facebook's to disable first and ask questions later is extremely excluding. They are upsetting their clients for heaven's sake. What should happen is that a warning be sent, for whatever reason they are considering disabling your account, and you have 5 days to respond with action to fix the issue or make a good enough argument to suspend their action.
A zero tollerance policy doesn't work for a social networking site.
Nicole believes the photo's that were reported were of her children, in the shower together. Now I've seen these photo's, there were no 'bits' showing in any of them. Her son's naked bottom was showing in one but nothing more than that. I didn't find them offensive at all, it was siblings playing in the shower together, something I'd likely see if I were at her house myself at bath time. Her account is set so that only friends can view photo's, so these photo's are NOT being shown to the general public and, therefore, not accessible to any paedophile trawling the internet for pictures of naked/semi naked children.
I, myself, have friends on my facebook page who have photo's of themselves with their asses hanging out, wearing g-string bikini's, yet these images are classified as 'appropriate'? How does that make sense? An adult ass is going to be more widely sexually objectified than a child's naked rear end. Paedophiles are common place these days but are not as common as we all like to make out. I think it'd be something like 1 in 1000 people will have had inappropriate thoughts about a child in their life and only 1 in 100,000 will actually act on it. Where as I guarantee 1 in 3 people have inappropriate thoughts about my friend in the g-string bikini and 100% of those would act on those thoughts given the chance!
The fact is, children showering together is an innocent act, and my friend should not be punished for wanting to share this lovely event with her friends just because there are a small amount of sicko's out there that would objectify it - yet she is.
Shame on you Facebook, SHAME!
Stay strong Nic, I love you!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
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