UPDATE: Facebook has apologised for removing a video on breast cancer awareness posted by a Swedish group, saying it was incorrectly taken out.
Facebook likes to call itself a technology company rather than what it is – a publisher. It exercises editorial authority and both removes material it does not like and it promotes material that it does. As a publisher they don’t – by any stretch of the imagination – do a very good job. After the fiasco of the banning of the iconic Vietnam “napalm girl” image, they have now proceeded to further demonstrate their stupidity by banning educational images about breast cancer from the Swedish Cancer Society.
Swedish Cancer Society: Learn to know your breasts
Facebook has removed a video on breast cancer awareness posted in Sweden because it deemed the images “offensive”, the Swedish Cancer Society said Thursday. The video, displaying animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, aimed to explain to women how to check for suspicious lumps.
Sweden’s Cancerfonden said it has tried to contact Facebook without any response and has decided to appeal the decision to remove the video. Facebook was not immediately available for comment. “We find it incomprehensible and strange how one can perceive medical information as offensive,” Cancerfonden communications director Lena Biornstad told AFP. “This is information that saves lives, which is important for us,” she said. “This prevents us from doing so.”
Facebook faced outrage in September for repeatedly deleting a historic Vietnam War photo included in a post by Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg. It said the iconic photo of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm bombing violated its rules but later backtracked on the decision.
The k2p blog 