Facebook has recently gotten a lot of attention with boobs, and not in a pleasant way. In the past their censors even banned photos of women breast-feeding as being offensive, even though they recently back-tracked on this policy and said it was no longer going to enforce this policy. Strangely enough it seems that however they are still somewhat obsessed with breasts and have created a new filter that detects them in posts and prevents those posts from being advertised under new ad guidelines.
A sales representative from Facebook confirmed that they are using new technology that detects things from “text” and “too much skin” on the photos, and “excessive cleavage” and prevents any posts containing those from being posted.
A quick test of the technology showed that it would detect almost any cleavage and prevent those posts from being advertised, under their “anti-porn” policy. We uploaded the following photo of a friend to see what would happen, and assumed that since most of her body was covered that in fact it would be allowed.
Strangely enough, after trying to “boost” the post through paid advertising only 10 seconds later, we got the following message immediately.
This raises a lot of questions. The photos far from risqué and definitely not pornographic. One might argue it’s pretty tame, but does show a little bit of cleavage. It however raises a lot of questions about what the prudes who run Facebook think just a little cleavage, and also obviously is inherently biased against women who may be more well endowed or even larger. Claiming that even showing a little cleavage means that its “adult products” or services is a strange claim and definitely sexist. Would they do the same of a man with his shirt unbuttoned?