I’m not a big Facebook user, but today I checked my Facebook feed. One of my moronic contacts posted a video of an Islamic terrorist group executing five or six men. These men were on their knees lines up shoulder to shoulder. A group of terrorist armed with the usual ak47s and wearing masks stood behind them. One of the masked men then produced a pistol and went behind each man putting a bullet into their heads. The video shows the shot, the pieces of head blowing off and the splatter of blood. Each man falls and a big pool of blood forms.
The person posting this went on the usual rant of how we need to nuke the Arabs and all that. Morally the video disturbed me, but graphically I’ve seen worse but then I thought of how many children are on Facebook and how this is certainly not appropriate for then to see. I reported the video to Facebook and they replied that the video didn’t violate their posting rules. I was quite shocked that Facebook found nothing wrong with the content and they didn’t pull it. Am I mistaken or should Facebook have pulled this video?
No, mine isn’t but I would bet that this video shows up on hundreds of users pages and I would also some that there are more than a few of those that are accessed by children. Not to mention that one doesn’t need to be a child to realize that a snuff film is generally not in good taste. If anyone who wants to view people getting murdered that’s their business. However just like porn it’s something that one doesn’t generally post on a site like Facebook.
What surprised me is that Facebook considered this appropriate content for the site. Something treks me if I posted some hardcore porn on my news feed it would be quickly taken down by the moderators there. I find it is that seed would surely be banned but graphic video of murder is okay.
You’re correct that if you posted porn, it would be removed. Because they have a policy against it. From the same source as last time:
This is GQ, so all we can do is answer your question: No, the content should not be taken down, because it does not (in Facebook’s judgement, which is the one that matters) violate their established policy. It’s their platform, so they get to decide what goes on it, subject to applicable laws. Of which there are none, so far as I know.
You’re free to argue that this is wrong, and that there should be laws that force them to have policies that would ban this content, but that’s a debate, and thus this isn’t the place for it.
There’s a difference between considering something appropriate (which facebook didn’t do) and not considering it inappropriate (which is what they did).
All they said is that it didn’t violate their rules, it’s not like they gave it their stamp of approval.
Since you are basically asking for opinions about whether or not the video should have been allowed, shouldn’t this have been in IMHO or Great Debates?
Protecting children from seeing graphic content should be their parent’s issue (for instance by not allowing them to have a facebook account before a given age). Not everybody else’s.
I think Facebook’s attitude is that if you don’t like what your friends are posting you should:
Ask them to stop.
Block them.
Defriend them.
I suspect the “No Porn” rule is less about protecting public sensibilities and more about preventing Facebook porn clubs that would gobble up huge amounts of server resources.
It’s already sanitized in the eyes of some people - those that think nipples are more offensive. The idea that uncovered, happy human bodies are unacceptable but videos of murders are is very hard to wrap my head around.
The factual part of this has been pretty well answered. Since a lot of folks seem to want to express their opinions on the subject, I think the thread will do better with a move to IMHO. It may eventually end up in GD depending on how the thread progresses.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Pretty sure that Facebook has a policy on members being at least 14 years old. If parents are letting their younger children join Facebook or even peruse their own account, then that’s on the parents, not Facebook.
I think you have to be 13 to join facebook, so yeah. By the time you’re thirteen, I think it’s time to quit shielding kids from all this kind of thing.
OP, if it bothers you that much, just defriend the guy. The reason this video isn’t considered “gratuitous violence” is because it’s about current events. (Or if you posted the Zapruder film, I doubt that would be taken down). It’s not snuff. This is news – it’s actually happening out there in the world right now. It’s not pretty, but sadly, it’s life.