Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 17 January 2020
Does the naked body belong on Facebook? It's complicated

By BARBARA ORTUTAY the images come with a
AP Technology Writer warning screen.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Even with carefully thought-
When is a photograph of out policies, enforcement
nude bodies artistic or titil- can feel arbitrary and the
lating? A woman's exposed consequences, lasting.
nipple a political statement Dawn Robertson started
or erotica? her women-empowerment
A video of childbirth might campaign, "Grab Them by
show genitalia. Should the Ballot," before the 2018
what someone considers a U.S. midterm elections. She
celebration of life be cen- wanted to inspire women
sored? to vote, especially in light
In 1964, U.S. Supreme Court of the MeToo movement
Justice Potter Stewart de- and growing restrictions on
clined to define what con- abortion. She organized
stitutes obscenity but fa- women to pose nude, cov-
mously added, "I know it ered only by strategically
when I see it." placed ballots, props and
In the 21st century, does hashtags.
Facebook? Then, she posted them on
The social media behe- Facebook and Instagram.
moth is in a well-publicized Suddenly, the campaign
struggle to address hate This photo taken Oct. 3, 2019 shows artist Spencer Tunick, a photographer known internationally took off, though much of
speech, extremism, abuse for his shoots assembling masses of nude people, at the FLATZ Museum in Dornbirn, Austria. the attention was from
and misinformation on its Associated Press right-wing publications
services — which together enforced. They say their expression. "Instagram re- systems do a better job such as Breitbart, Robert-
serve nearly 3 billion peo- work is being unfairly cen- ally is the magazine of the with nudity than with hate son said.
ple worldwide. sored, condemning them world right now. And if art- speech, extremism and "All of a sudden, it was just
At the same time, it's been to "Facebook jail" with no ists are being censored on misinformation. After all, a insane, the negative feed-
retooling its policies on nu- warning and little, if any re- Instagram it's really danger- butt is a butt and a nipple back we got," she said.
dity. It's tweaking its original course. ous for freedom of speech is a nipple. But deciding "Facebook banned my
heavy-handed policies to And it's no small matter for and openness when it when a nipple is art, porn personal account."
account for modern nu- them. Artists can be sud- comes to the body and or protest gets murky even She said she got no warn-
ances around gender iden- denly left without their au- art," said Spencer Tunick, when humans are doing ing, or reason why she was
tity, political speech and dience, businesses without a photographer known in- the deciding. Teaching AI banned, though she fig-
self-expression, employing access to their customers ternationally for his shoots software about human sex- ured it was for nudity. That
thousands of people and and vulnerable people assembling masses of nude ual desire is a whole other is even though Facebook
quickly evolving artificial in- without a support net- people. ballgame. allows nudity in some cas-
telligence for the task. work. And it means that a Of course, there's near- From its start as a college es, including for political
But some of its users — in- company in Silicon Valley, universal agreement that photo directory and so- activism.
cluding activists, sex thera- whose online platforms child exploitation and non- cial network, Facebook Artists have staged protests
pists, abuse survivors, artists have become our town consensual images don't banned nudity. Over the and pleaded with Face-
and sex educators — say squares, diaries, art galler- belong on social networks. years, as Facebook's au- book. Some have found
policies at Facebook and ies and protest platforms, Pornography probably dience grew bigger and other platforms to show
its Instagram service are still often gets final say on mat- doesn't either. more diverse, the ban their work, but they say the
too vague and unevenly ters of free speech and self- Facebook's monitoring loosened. The company company's sheer domi-
instituted exceptions for nance in online communi-
Rights group demands Israel rein in breastfeeding women, for cations makes it difficult to
images of post-mastecto-
have the same reach.
murky spyware company my scars. Birthing videos "What we are trying to do is
are now allowed, as are open the gate somewhat,"
photos of post gender re- said Svetlana Mintcheva,
By TIA GOLDENBERG use it for malicious purpos- ing some 1,400 users of its assignment surgery. director of programs at
Associated Press es. "They are the most dan- encrypted messaging ser- "We had this policy that the National Coalition
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An gerous cyber weapon that vice WhatsApp with highly said no genitals on the Against Censorship, which
Israeli court heard a case we know of and they're not sophisticated spyware. platform," said Kim Malfa- has asked Facebook to
Thursday calling for restric- being properly overseen," The spyware has also been cini, the Facebook product reconsider its ban on pho-
tions to be slapped on NSO said Gil Naveh, spokesman implicated in the gruesome policy manager who over- tographic nudity. "The hu-
Group, an Israeli company for Amnesty International Is- killing of Saudi journal- sees how the company's man body is not this hor-
that makes surveillance rael. "That is the reason why ist Jamal Khashoggi, who community standards are rible, scary, traumatizing
software that is said to we think that their license was dismembered in the developed. "Until two years thing. It's a beautiful thing."
have been used to target should be revoked." Saudi consulate in Istan- ago there were no excep- But beauty has been his-
journalists and dissidents NSO is implicated in a series bul in 2018. It is also said to tions to that." torically a tricky thing to
around the world. The of digital break-in attempts be behind a campaign to But the reviewers began define. Which means Face-
case, brought by Amnesty and the court case is the compromise proponents of seeing photos and vid- book's stance on nudity will
International, calls for Israel latest pushback against a soda tax in Mexico and eos women shared about likely continue to shift.
to revoke the spyware firm's the company and its prod- an effort to hack into the their childbirth, she said. "No policy is set in stone,"
export license, preventing uct. Last year, Facebook phone of an Arab dissident Facebook carved out an Malfacini said. "On any giv-
it from selling its contentious sued the hacker-for-hire that prompted an update exception for images of en policy, we are in some
product abroad, particu- company in U.S. federal to Apple's operating sys- childbirth even though process of revisiting some
larly to regimes that could court for allegedly target- tem. q they show genitalia. Now, part of it."q