Facebook has got its community standards all wrong – again

The scene: Facebook Police HQ.

IT Ryan, a grizzled sergeant, and young whippersnapper Nic “Network” O’Toole are at work on the nightshift, patrolling the mean streets of cyberspace. A siren howls loudly in the distance as rain pitter patters on the window.

Ryan: I sure could do with a quiet night. Did I tell you I’m just three days from retirement? I’m going to get coffee. And donuts. You want coffee?

O’Toole: Yessir! Oh, hang on a minute, I think you need to see this.

Ryan: Nope. Coffee first. Then I look.

O’Toole drums his fingers against his desk. On his screen is an ad for a book by author K L Montgomery bearing the legend “In the 5 years I’ve known him, my husband has never once called me beautiful” next to a picture showing a woman photographed from behind with part of her unclothed upper back on display.

Ryan comes in, sees the screen and drops both cups. Then the donuts.

Ryan: Why didn’t you tell me? That’s a clear community standards breach. Call for backup! Now! Sound the alarm and for God’s sake get that off your screen. It’s NSFW!

O’Toole: But sir, I tried to alert you. And didn’t we let that pic of a guy's bare chest through the other day? The one in the aftershave ad?

Ryan: Are you an idiot? Male chests are different.

O’Toole: There was that Olay ad too. There was a lot more than just the woman’s bare shoulder in that. It was her whole back!

Ryan: Listen, dumbass. Olay has a shooting licence because they’re huge. Now do something about that image. If Zuckerberg sees this we’ll be done for. And I was just three days from retirement!

Yes, Facebook is making headlines for all the wrong reasons over its standards again.

You may remember the mess it made of new mothers posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding their infants a little while ago. This time the battle is over a bare back/shoulder. Or should that be a bare female back/shoulder.

The New York Times last week reported on the case of the aforementioned author – K L Montgomery is actually a pen name for indie romance writer Kirsta Venero – highlighting what critics have suggested is a Facebook double standard when it comes to how images of the female body are treated when compared to those of the male body.

She didn’t think the ad she had submitted was any more racy than the one for Olay (that she’d seen) because it really wasn’t. But it got rejected all the same.

After a bit of a two and fro, and the intervention of the NYT, it was all said to have been a mistake. Facebook told the newspaper it had incorrectly rejected the ad for “implying nudity” with a “sexual undertone” in violation of its community standards.

But the NYT highlighted other incidents, including one in which a woman running a reading group get into trouble after wearing a black t-shirt in a photo with a dark background (yes it got that silly).

So a double standard, as the NYT piece suggested?

I took to Facebook to have a look, taking in several sites devoted to romantic fiction (just so you know how willing I am to suffer for my art) which certainly showed quite a bit of provocative male nudity.

However, there were also lots of female legs, and both genders displayed in their underwear. Plus a couple of bare female shoulders.

Moving on through mainstream movies with an 18 certificate it became clear that certain groups feature far more risqué imagery than what was on display in the book ad or the reading group.

So, a case of inconsistent standards or standards inconsistently applied?

It might be both.

Of course, big companies like Olay rarely find a problem, perhaps because big companies like Facebook tend to be good at communicating with other big companies that are customers and employ humans to deal with them. That isn't always the case with the smaller ones.

However, as has become clear over ads bought with the aim of interfering with US elections, Facebook’s difficulties over standards can become very serious indeed. And just this week the Guardian reported that the social network ran a survey that asked, “in thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures”.

That was described as a mistake. A bad one, I’d submit.

This is a company that hosts more geniuses on the site of its campus than can be found in the entirety of many small countries, partly because Silicon Valley’s big guns, of which Facebook is one, spend a lot of time and money enticing them to join and settle in the good old US of A before Donald Trump builds a big wall around the place.

And yet, time and again, it displays a singular lack of common sense that is getting to the state of being downright disturbing, as all these incidents make clear. An overreaction to trivial violations of standards that no one in their right mind would consider to be violations, while far more serious issues aren’t picked up.

Perhaps Facebook needs to try and hire some of the sort of people who sometimes watch commercial TV and so wouldn't have seen anything to worry about in Venero’s ad but would have had the sense to scream “NO” upon seeing that mistaken survey. Or asked: “hang on, where are these coming from?” on the subject of election ads.

Perhaps they’re already there. If they are they badly need listening to.