Artist's nude photo censored by Facebook
Internationally acclaimed artist Ella Dreyfus is shocked that her 1999 image of a nude woman's hands has been removed from Facebook under 'community guidelines'.
PT1M52S 620 349Sydney artist Ella Dreyfus has been blocked from Facebook after posting photographs of ageing nude women in protest at the narrow "community standards" that govern the social media site.
Following the contentious censorship of an image of Aboriginal female breasts by the social media giant last week, the internationally acclaimed artist and senior lecturer at the National Art School believes that Facebook deems some female breasts more acceptable than others.
On Monday, an image of an aged woman's hands in front of her nude body was deleted from Dreyfus' account "because the content might promote sexual violence or exploitation".
Artist Ella Dreyfus is conducting a social media experiment on the naked form. Photo: Supplied
She objected by posting a second photo of a woman's naked torso, this time focused on a long, deep scar running down the subject's sternum. As in all of the artist's photos, the woman's bare breasts are not blurred or obstructed in any way.
In the post, she challenged Facebook's systems to distinguish between what it deems acceptable and unacceptable upper body nudity.
"Facebook, can you determine whether this chest belongs to a male or female person?" wrote Dreyfus to her 1216 friends on the private page. "And after making your judgment, would it breach your 'community standards'?
Dreyfus at Sydney's Arts Health Institute conference on Monday. During the lecture, Facebook censored her account. Photo: Ella Dreyfus
"You removed my previous photograph because the content might threaten or promote sexual violence or exploitation. This photograph shows a chest with a scar after open-heart surgery, and comes from my art exhibition Age and Consent. It has nothing to do with sexual activity. Unless you see it that way."
Facebook is clear about restricting "some images of female breasts if they include the nipple", but the artist suspected that breasts that are young or less immediately "female" slip through the censorship process.
While the photo, chosen specifically for its androgyny, appeared to pose no problems, a follow-up post featuring a screengrab of the earlier banned photo saw the artist slapped with the 24-hour ban on Wednesday afternoon.
The photo of two Aboriginal women at a Northern Territory public ceremony, published by New Matilda, that was the subject of a Facebook ban last week. Photo: Chris Graham, At Large Media
The ban comes after Aboriginal rights activist Celeste Liddle and some of her supporters, including Dreyfus, were censored by Facebook for posting an image of Aboriginal women with painted chests and bare breasts engaged in a cultural ceremony in the desert.
The image illustrated Liddle's transcript of her International Women's Day speech, which focused in part on Indigenous voices in feminism and gender equality and was published by the website New Matilda.
By showing naked breasts, the image reportedly "violated community guidelines by posting nudity or material of a sexually suggestive nature".
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald on Dreyfus' work in 1999.
A gay kiss, nude drawings and breastfeeding mothers have all been struck by the same unforgiving rules.
"We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks," reads Facebook's Community Standards page. "We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts nude figures."
Dreyfus' social experiment raised the question of why some images of breasts were deleted while others, such as the possibly more male-looking, pass the test. Does Facebook use some kind of nipple-detection software – and if not, how is human bias such as ageism avoided, she asked.
The first image, which was removed from Facebook. Photo: Ella Dreyfus, Age and Consent, ©1999, Gelatin Silver photograph, courtesy of the artist
"We use automation to make sure that our reviewers are focused on reviewing what really needs to be reviewed," a Facebook spokesman told Fairfax via email.
"For instance, if 1000 people report a video right away, we will not have 1000 people review it; we will just have a couple people review it.
"Similarly, if the person who posted the reported content has already voluntarily removed it, we do not need to review it. So yes, we use automation to help ensure that we are using our reviewers in the most valuable way. But at the end of the day, a lot of this work is contextual, so we have people reading the reports to make those decisions."
The second Dreyfus image uploaded to Facebook. Photo: Ella Dreyfus, Age and Consent, ©1999, Gelatin Silver photograph, courtesy of the artist
Those monitors "receive regular training in our policies and are responsible for reviewing reports from our community and removing content that violates our standards."
The spokesman referred to Facebook's nudity policy, as laid out online:
"We are aware that people sometimes share content containing nudity for reasons like awareness campaigns, artistic projects or cultural investigations. The reason we restrict the display of nudity is because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content – particularly because of cultural background or age. In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content. As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like, and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes."
He said that reviews are usually triggered by a user reporting questionable content, which suggests that the chest image is still up because nobody has reported it – and that the hands image may have been reported by one of Dreyfus' friends, a theory she considers unlikely.
He added that the number of reports is insignificant, meaning just one transgression of Facebook standards is enough to warrant action.
"If we receive 1 million reports of content which we find to be within our standards, then that content will stay up," the spokesman said.
Speaking with Fairfax Media, Dreyfus said Facebook's actions "do not bode well for the future."
"It's a really beautiful, poignant image from my Age and Consent series, I had a lot of positive feedback from people who were moved by the image," she said.
"It could be portrayed as being sexualised as much as any picture of a woman. What is wrong with being nude? These bodies have so much history and life in them."
The images were first published in full across print media 17 years ago, she said, as she queried today's encroaching censorship from unknown decision-makers.
"What's really bizarre is that when my exhibition first came out in 1999, I had major coverage. What world of censorship do we live in?
"The whole point of my exhibition was that we are not allowed to look at older bodies. Here we are in 2016 and the biggest company in the world is really monitoring carefully what we are allowed to see and so diversity is not there. Who are the people making these decisions?"
Instagram, which was bought by Facebook for approximately $A1.3 billion in 2012, also censored Dreyfus' original image on Wednesday afternoon.
In a post titled Managing Unconscious Bias, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote that "diversity is central to Facebook's mission of creating a more open and connected world".
What precisely remains offensive about an aged woman's nipple – in traditional dress, in artistic pose or in plain celebration of diversity – remains unclear.
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