The SHOCKING Photos That Violated Facebook's Policies!
from the avert-yer-eyes! dept
Update: The account is now unblocked, with this message from Facebook:
I’m so sorry for the inconvenience caused, there was a temporary misconfiguration in our photo review systems which caused a very small subset of users to be incorrectly enrolled in one of our checkpoints. There was no issue with your original photo, we have a combination of automated and human-review systems dedicated to keeping people safe, and a bug caused one of these systems to incorrectly enroll a small number of users into checkpoints.
We have since remedied the issue, and remediated all affected accounts. Please let me know if you or others are still experiencing any difficulties.
Yesterday I posted this adorable photo on Facebook:
Another photo of Nut and me. Here you can see in more detail how Nut presses her face as hard as she can into mine. She does this all night, by the way. If I move my face away, she rearranges herself to grip the back of my head as tightly as possible. If I’m face-down on the pillow, she slides her paws under into my eye sockets and mashes her head into my ear. It’s very cute but I don’t think I could stand it every night.
“We noticed you may be posting photos that violate our Community Standards. Help make Facebook better by cleaning up your photos and removing friends that post nudity or other things that violate our standards.”
Then it took me directly to all my photos and said,
“To keep your account active, please remove any photos that contain nudity or sexually inappropriate content. Check the box next to each photo you need to remove.”
I didn’t have a single dirty photo to check, so I checked none and then clicked the box that said, “I have checked all my photos that violate Facebook’s policies.” For that, I was rewarded with this:
“Because you uploaded photos that violate our policies, you won’t be able to upload photos for 3 days.
“If you have other photos on the site that violate our policies, be sure to remove them immediately or you could be blocked for longer. After this block is lifted, please make sure any photos you upload follow Facebook’s Policies.”
Followed by another checkbox that says,
“I understand Facebook’s policies and I won’t upload any photos that violate these policies.”
But I haven’t checked that box yet, because I really don’t understand Facebook’s policies. At all. Maybe Franz Kafka could explain them to me. Can you?
UPDATE: several hours later, I still can’t see my FB home page/news feed. This is what I continue to get instead:
Filed Under: blocked, cats, censorship, nina paley, photos
Comments on “The SHOCKING Photos That Violated Facebook's Policies!”
I am guessing that FB will have a PR team rushing to fix your problem within minutes of this post going public. But what about the thousands of people who get hit with this bot-driven nonsense every day and don’t have a public forum available? The same type of problem occurs with innocent victims of Content-ID and DCMA notice mills.
For now our only real hope is that cases like this one cause the companies involved to do some internal review and revise policies when executives finally realize how much damage they are doing to their brands. Executives are never reluctant to spend big bucks on advertising and public image, but they are not quick to recognize that this type of overzealous policy enforcement can undo in seconds all of that expensive brand promotion.
Re: Re:
“For now our only real hope”
I’m pretty sure that hidden in all the fine print on Facebook is this line:
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here”
Re: Robots attack
That’s not the worst of it. More “fun” to come 🙂
Sheckley described it very colorfully in his “Watchbird”:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579
Re: Re:
It’s 2012. Everybody has a public forum available.
beloved FB reasoning
Yours is not to reason why, yours is only to comply or die (FB wise).
I’m so glad that I don’t use Facebook.
Yes!
I for one welcome the banning of all cat pictures uploaded to Facebook.
Isn't it obvious?
You’re posting pictures of your pussy on facebook!
Re: Isn't it obvious?
Damn, you beat me to it.
Re: Isn't it obvious?
Not only that, but she’s got Nut on her face. Shameful.
Re: Isn't it obvious?
Not only posting pictures of her pussy, but talking about having Nut pressed up against her face….
How obscene could she get… sheesh
Re: Re: Isn't it obvious?
Pressed hard up against her face at that.
Re: Re: Re: Isn't it obvious?
Apparently Reddit has visited Techdirt today.
Hmm
Well that’s what you get when you upload pictures of your pussy!
Just be happy someone doesn’t try to copyright “Photo containing picture of cat” and issues takedowns for every cat picture on the internet.
In all seriousness, this was probably triggered by the description. Without the picture and context, one with a dirty mind could read that as ‘sexual’.
Here’s a thought, inappropriate trolling. Take completely innocent photos and give them extremely suggestive sounding, but actually innocent descriptions, then call out FB when they get flagged.
(Picture of a smiling dog in a pool treading water with girl in a normal swimsuit)
“This is dick, Dick loves to be in the pool, but gets extra happy when his favorite girl is swimming with him. He loves swimming doggie style, though it makes him tired if he does it too long”
Re: Re:
I almost want to open Facebook account just so I can post pictures of me with nuts in my mouth, etc.
Re: Re: Re:
I almost want to open Facebook account just so I can post pictures of me with nuts in my mouth, etc.
Seriously? Do you ever read what you write before posting it?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hey it works for me…
Re: Re:
“Just be happy someone doesn’t try to copyright ‘Photo containing picture of cat’…”
How about: “Method and apparatus for detecting contact between human skin and animals in a user-determined social media photographic archive”? Come on, Eastern District… let’s get trollin’!
Big surprise....
Let’s here it for the great authoritative government group of a******, jerk-off, low-life scumbag dumb***es at facebook for being too restrictive. How blatently incompetent do they have to be that they can’t even do their job properly. There are thousands out of work who could do a better job than these morons, and they have to stand in the unemployment line while idiots like those leading FB screw up their own system.
What the hell is this? Unnecessary censorship? Why not??? They’ve already censored everything else. Might as well censor that does not need censoring. Make a post on FB: “Oh look! There’s a *bleep* walking her *bleep* down the *bleep*!” Then along comes Facebook: “Sorry! We’ve detected that you attempted to use verbs and nouns in your post. That violates our Terms of Service along with pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and infinitives. Please remove the offending language or we’ll suspend your account!”
But in all fairness, I can see where FB might censor this picture. After all, that’s a cat. And a cat comes from ‘pussy cat’, and we all know what word is offensive in that. “Sorry, you can’t use ‘cat’, or even have a picture of a cat anywhere on FB. You also can’t say ‘pu**ywillow’ as even though it’s a plant and grows in nature, we’ve censored it.”
Now, take this post I just wrote and post it to FB, and chances are you’ll see this: “***** ******** **** ***** ****** ****** and ***** **** * ***** ******. (Note from FB: We are currently deciding if the word ‘and’ is offensive to some individual in the Arctic Circle who eats fish and berries to survive. If so, ‘and’ will be added to our ban list.”
My take...
No other comment other than Nina looks stoned in that first pic. 😉
Re: My take...
That’s how all catowners look.
Re: My take...
It was first thing in the morning. I was very sleepy.
Re: Re: My take...
Maybe FB thought you were a pot head?
Re: Re: My take...
Sureeee…
typical FB from what i understand from other users. for no apparent reasons, someone or something goes totally off the rails and just blocks people. i dont know why those that have this happen are:-
a) not able to sort out WIT A PERSON at FB what exactly is wrong
b) dont just go to another means of contacting their ‘friends’ making sure they all know what is going on!
i appreciate that there has to be care taken it what is/not allowed, but to have a piece of rogue software doing it, when it keeps going ga-ga is ridiculous!
I shared this story on my facebook.
Obviously cat pictures are banned on Facebook, since they tend to cause cuteness overload.
I’m getting the suspicion, Nina, the picture wasn’t blocked by your friends, but those who can’t stand your policy on copyright.
I’ve seen these types of attacks before, which is why I find it ludicrous FB’s policy can’t take time out of its own position to realize some reports are bogus.
Welcome to the next generation of the DMCA.
Now I hope people will understand why I don’t like those comments being flagged by the community.
This is no different.
Looks like you’re going to be in for a world of FB’s customer service hell for a while.
Bring water. Gets pretty hot over there, I hear.
Re: those who can't stand your policy on copyright.
This, or maybe one of the foaming-at-the-mouth fundies who can’t abide Sita Sings the Blues.
The Facebook cycle:
1) Facebook does something “evil”;
2) You complain loudly about how evil Facebook is, polluting the the Internet with yet another “Facebook sucks” article;
3) Later, despite all the harm Facebook caused you, like a Heroin addict, you return to using Facebook;
4) Return to 1)…what, you don’t actually expect Facebook to get any better do you?
Sorry for being sort of a dick, but you have to admit that it isn’t “normal” for people to flock to something that causes such misery routinely. And we’re not even getting into the fact that Facebook is trading your personal information for cash.
Re: Re:
THIS
Re: Re:
“…people to flock to something that causes such misery routinely.”
Like Mesonexian Eeve said above, this could have been instigated by a cadre of knuckle-draggers, which means there’s an obvious flaw in FB’s business structure especially since this function isn’t working as intended.
Re: Re:
You’re absolutely right. I deleted my Facebook account several months ago, and I haven’t missed it.
In fact, now that I *don’t* have it, it’s much easier to see how insidiously it’s infected most of the internet.
It’s great, I can instantly figure out which organizations I don’t want to deal with whenever I see “you need to log in to Facebook.”
Re: Re:
Unfortunately, like MySpace before it, and AOL before that, Facebook is pretty much the 800 pound gorilla of social networking at the moment. Unfortunately, I have a lot of friends spread across 11 states now, and when most of them moved to Facebook, I followed because it’s a convenient “one stop shopping” to keep track and communicate with them all. When enough of the move on to the “Next Big Thing” (when it eventually arrives, I will gladly abandon Facebook like I abandoned MySpace.
Re: Re:
The big thing that draws people to Facebook is often its games, sad as that is. Those games usually operate like a Skinner Box. Small rewards constantly (xp and currency), random larger rewards (new pony or something), and of course, electric shocks if you don’t continue (crops withering). The idea is to keep you hooked. You want to play because of the rewards, and you feel compelled to play because of your friends playing, and the game’s systematic punishments inflicted upon your “farm” if you don’t continue to maintain it. This is why there’s that 4th step.
Re: Re: Re:
you had me at “new pony” 😀
Er...
You did notice that the cat is not wearing any clothes, right?
Re: Er...
Facebook recommends…
http://www.smallanimaldecency.com/
Re: Er...
Dang–and here I was going to comment, ‘Isn’t it obvious? The cat’s naked.’ Ah well.
When you buy into a private proprietary system, you’re signing on for arbitrary rules and enforcement.
If you don’t like Facebook policies, stop using their site. It worked for me.
Re: Re:
Well, that’s helpful.
*sigh*
Here is the problem
“… Nut and me. Here you can see …Nut presses…as hard as she can into mine. She does this all night, by the way.., she … grip the back of my head as tightly as possible. If I’m face-down on the pillow, she slides (CENSORED) into my eye sockets and mashes her (CENSORED) into my ear. … I don’t think I could stand it every night.”
Re: Here is the problem
You really need to mask “eye sockets” too to make this work.
Rats leaving a sinking ship
There’s a reason why people are abandoning FB in droves. Welcome to the next MySpace.
I’m trying to figure out how this is news.
Nuts
How dare you name your cat “Nut”. Totally distasteful.
Re: Nuts
My boyfriend’s daughters named her. She came from the SPCA with another cat, who they named Ella. Nut Ella. Not my fault.
Re: Re: Nuts
Now THAT’s funny!
Re: Re: Nuts
No. That is a great name. You have no idea.
Re: Re: Nuts
Oh darn, I had been thinking of the sky goddess.
Re: Re: Nuts
I read Nutella and my thought process went like this:
Nutella – Economy size Nutella form Costco – Nectar of the gods – sugar coma.
Re: Nuts
Have you ever owned a cat? ‘Nut’ is a perfectly descriptive name for such animals. Just like ‘Meth’ is a perfectly descriptive name for Labs 😉
i can understand FB banning pictures of pussy, but this is a bit of a stretch!
Nuts
“It’s very cute but I don’t think I could stand it every night.”
Sometimes you feel like a nut… sometimes you don’t.
This seems like a clbuttic case of The Scunthorpe Problem.
Nuts and faces....
…should not be in close proximity.
That’s a banning.
Re: Nuts and faces....
i guess we better start banning squirrels, then
Re: Re: Nuts and faces....
SQUIRREL!
The IT guy responsible for the algorithm that filters that will be getting a call any day now.
It probably measures the area and if it covers above a certain threshold it assumes is nudity.
Priceless.
FB is doing everything it can to drive users away, but like the proverbial kicked puppy, users just keep coming back for more punishment. It seems everyone agrees FB is aweful, but “all my friends are on it” so most people stay.
Full disclosure: I do have a FB account. I signed up a year or two ago just because there are certain things you can’t do online unless you have a FB account. I have, I think, ten friends. And every one of them is an actual close friend or family member. I don’t even log into FB most days.
Re: Re:
Even better, they prevented me from joining.
Re: Re:
What exactly can you not do on the internet without a Facebook.
I have been on the internet for a long time now and have run into nothing I want to do that I need a Facebook account to do.
So… facebook scripts aren’t allowed to fail? Good to know it deserved a TD post.
Re: Re:
The story isn’t that a script failed. The story is that they won’t tell her what policy was violated, and they won’t tell her what photo violated the policy.
Re: Re: Re:
I thought the story was that she refused to accept the TOS then complained she couldn’t upload pictures/view her feed anymore.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Kindly explain specifically what TOS she “refused to accept”.
It’s the bestiality.
Freckles
Freckles might be throwing off the nipple detection algorithm.
Re: Freckles
Here is a PHP class from Egypt.
http://www.phpclasses.org/package/3269-PHP-Determine-whether-an-image-may-contain-nudity.html
And of course there are versions in Javascript too.
http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/
Don’t miss the demo links below in the page.
Re: Freckles
Breast face!
Maybe someone knew you would write an article about this??
Like how Amazon showed they could delete Kindle content by deleting “1984” ? that *had* to be some insider trying to get the message to the world about the injustice.
Maybe somebody knew that if they screwed with YOUR account, then you’d bother telling the world and bring attention to this problem?
Anyway, ridiculous stuff. I wish we had an open-framework for social networking like we have with e-mail. There should be a way to network via whatever system you want and not have to agree to any particular provider’s policies in order to interact with other people in this way.
Re: Maybe someone knew you would write an article about this??
1984 is out of copyright in Australia, but not in the USA. Many people in the US and England bought the now cheap version of 1984, which Amazon was only authorized to sell in Australia. They went back and deleted it from all the devices and refunded the money paid.
Re: Re: Maybe someone knew you would write an article about this??
Thanks for clarifying about the details in that case. It’s still almost an unbelievable coincidence that 1984 would be the example where Amazon demonstrated for the first time that they had the technical capacity to go into your device and delete things unilaterally.
Unreal
I’m always surprised when Facebook pulls this maneuver.
Too many cat pictures!
Although I disagree with FB’s reason for removing the pictures, I believe there are entirely too many cat pictures on the internet. The cat was obviously wearing fur, so a better reason for removing the pictures should have read more along the lines of:
“We noticed you may be posting photos that violate our Community Standards. Help make Facebook better by cleaning up your photos and removing friends that post cat pictures or other things that violate our standards.”
Re: Too many cat pictures!
There’s no such thing as “too many cat pictures on the internet”.
Sincerely,
A cat lover.
😀
Using Facebook is asking for it.
Facebook and Google both have only one purpose. That is to collect as much personal information as they can. , ,Then they sell this information to anyone that asks or give it away to any government organization that hints they wouldn’t mind having it.
When the “service” is free, the product is you. Using these kind of sites is begging to be used and abused. How intelligent is that?
Re: Using Facebook is asking for it.
If that were fully the case, they’d encourage nude photos.
Watch out...
Pretty soon you’ll be under investigation for production and distribution of kitty porn.
Retarded AIs
Thats what happens when they set AIs to do their enforcement for them. AIs of sub par IQ.
Facebook Response
Nina — I tried to find an email address to contact you directly without luck. I work at Facebook and focus on policy.
I’m so sorry for the inconvenience caused, there was a temporary misconfiguration in our photo review systems which caused a very small subset of users to be incorrectly enrolled in one of our checkpoints. There was no issue with your original photo, we have a combination of automated and human-review systems dedicated to keeping people safe, and a bug caused one of these systems to incorrectly enroll a small number of users into checkpoints.
We have since remedied the issue, and remediated all affected accounts. Please let me know if you or others are still experiencing any difficulties.
Re: Facebook Response
Thanks, got it (and posted your quote here below before seeing that you’d posted it first).
Re: Facebook Response
Fred,
Thanks for posting your response here. Glad to see that Nina’s immediate problem is resolved. But you are missing the bigger issue. FB blocked her access to her page, telling her there “may be” a problem with photos she had posted. FB didn’t tell her which photos were at issue. FB didn’t even explicitly say that nudity &/or sexual content was the problem, this was just hinted: “nudity or other things”.
This is intolerably passive-aggressive.
Re: Facebook Response
.
Who are you and what have you done with the silently icy, faceless monolith that we have all come to know and despise in such a reflexive fashion.
Well?
I’m waiting.
Still waiting.
Figures.
.
Community
While I appreciate how hard a fuzzy nut may press against your face when you’re trying to sleep, do we know that it’s simply not the fact that it was reported as inappropriate? That’s all that will matter until it’s reviewed by humans, and Facebook isn’t obliged to take further action, unless persons are harrassing her by repeatedly targetting her pictures to report.
Just how I thought it worked. It’s an automated reporting system, I watched where it took days for them to remove child porn… since about that time, assuming the problem was a back long of report to be humanly reviewed, it propassumes guilt by default.
All speculation and observation. *shrug*
Update
As of a few minutes ago, the problem has been fixed (total time of blocked access: just over 24 hours). A FB communications person just emailed me:
Re: Update
Huh? who let the drunkard in again?
Shocking?
I agree with many of the sentiments above.
The moment you decided to use Facebook, you gave up every single right you have, put yourself in chains, threw away the key and handed them the leash.
They are a private company and can do whatever the heck they want. And right now, they are DESPERATELY trying to show a profit since their stock has never recovered from going public.
Facebook is cutting its own throat and I say… let them.
Once a company gets big enough that they forget that it was US who made them big, they need to go the way of the Dodo.
Re: Shocking?
This. And it happens again and again and again! Can you name even one technology company that hasn’t gone way downhill quality-wise after they went public?
People still use facebook?
I think the problem is temperature....
not the color temperature of the photo, that’s all right, it’s just that Nina is so Hawt….
Nina Paley, you’re giving my wife very bad ideas here lol. I was still shocked at the automated system when they banned a user for exposure of her elbows. My guess is that this might only occur because of privacy policies being reset because of updates, or simply people forget to set them. Of course in your case, it is because you’re somewhat of a public figure, so one would expect you to leave your profile open to the FaceBook public.
Well now it looks like I’m going to pay my parents a visit, my mom’s cat nuzzles you right beneath the chin while kneading your neck…he’s tried to kill me several times that way 😛
Nina! How could you post naked pictures of cats.
You totally should have noticed the 400 FB sponsored ads for cat clothing and bought some… then we could have avoided all of this!
Cat pictures on the internets… what is this world coming to!
Re:
“I thought”
I doubt it.
The story is that something that no reasonable person would think was violating anything was blocked, and then she was being asked to agree not to violate again, despite having no idea what the violation was in the first place. It’s really not hard to grasp why this is a problem, unless you’re the AC that has a pathological hatred of her because you watched her movie for free and didn’t like it.
Re:
That would be nice.. But Patricia Tallman recently had the same thing happen to her for posting Babylon 5 pictures and going public didn’t help her.
A simple solution for FB – if they are doing this, just explain why they are wrong.
Mace Book
My wife states, that they still have the group on how to cook a cat…
Bestiality!
Bestiality is illegal and immoral. Stop the “animal love” bestiality crap!!! Shame on you Nina!!!
Re:
Not only am I a face-off book member, I am the face-off book club President.
LOL
… you remind me of my chinese friend ug lee…. That’s why they banned you!!!!
(sorry i just had to say that – not cause you’re ugly or sh*t.. just thought it wold be a lol thing to say, nhf 🙂 )
Re:
easy, get new friends :3
Re:
u cant comment on some sites (the horror)
Have you considered not using Facebook? There is something inherently poisonous about it that makes me not want to use it. I brave it if I have to, but I don’t think it’s a good tool.
In the paraphrased words of Groucho Marks, I’m distrusting of any club that would allow me as a member.
If you post something innocuous to your friends, and FB tries to block you – let them. It’s evidence that FB doesn’t have your, or your friends, best interests at heart.
Me too.
Yup, they “tagged” me too on the picture of my granddaughter ready to go to her high school “Sadie Hawkins” dance. (I presumed they agreed with me about the skirt length.)
But I’m unblocked now after 48 hours so they backed off the three day ban.
Damn furries! ;3
your pictures
Yhat is the most stupid thying I have ever seen. The pics are adorable. They must have been eating dog food at the time of their deciding your photos were sexual. Dumb, and dumber. Really sick on FB’s part.
i m templorly blocked
i m sorry i m multipal send frnd req & sending msg help me pls
i m templorly blocked
i m sorry i m multipal send frnd req & sending msg help me pls
gross
I think your pic was banned because you’re kind of gross. Put some make up on. you look a little bit like a lesbian. Make up would go a long way in correcting that.
Pretty irrelevant to the fact that your post got taken down, but your cat’s nighttime “routine” is the absolute cutest! Wish my kitty did that with me!