Facebook’s policy can’t distinguish between right and wrong people

Facebook is banning everyone who falls under its policy of undesirable look even though the intentions are meant to be right. Facebook has always been in scandals sometimes due to its privacy practices and sometimes due to the distribution of misinformation on the platform.

Facebook is now again in the highlights due to its policies for body shamming. Recently a beauty blogger and a rosacea activist who shares her work through various platforms came across this new policy ban by Facebook when she tried to promote a post of her related to rosacea. This beauty blogger participated in a show that focused on highlighting models with skin conditions in order to promote the differences among people and when she tried to increase her reach beyond the 20,000 followers to let her voice be heard beyond her own followers she was banned to promote it.

Instagram didn’t approve her post for promotion and after she submitted it a pop-up message came stating that the post is focusing on a person’s body or a body part and that is the reason the ad can’t run. When the beauty blogger tried to revoke the decision by sending emails she was finally responded directly by Facebook the parent company and the response stated that Facebook prohibits any content that focuses on aspects of a person’s body and highlights any undesirable body state.

According to the Facebook policy, it doesn’t allow any content that displays any person’s body disability and images that focus on fat/cellulite or ill-fitting clothing are prohibited by Facebook. Although this policy is really helpful in order to not let any sort of harassment happen on the platform but this policy takes every user under the same category and that is something to be worried about. Any person trying to promote the consumption of food eating live animals or some close-up photos of ears or feet will be banned. But according to this rule, the ads that target overweight people or people with skin conditions to promote any sort of cures also fall under the same category and get banned for highlighting body parts on the platform.


So when the beauty blogger named Gillies tried to promote the content of people celebrating people with different skin conditions was banned because of the policy of Facebook.

In 2016, Facebook was accused of banning an Australian group to advertise an event focusing on body positivity due to its policy but the outrage by people made Facebook to reverse the decision.

So when Gillies was contacted by media outlets regarding the similar ban on her content and due to outrage hashtags used by her followers against Instagram policies made the company realize its mistake. Facebook revoked the ban on the ad stating that it was rejected in an error and now it's back to normal.

Conclusion

No doubt Facebook tries to secure its platform from any sort of digital harassment but we think that Facebook and Instagram should bring changes in its policy so that not all the people fall under the same category and get banned for even promoting the positivity of someone’s body part.


Photo Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images

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