Thursday, August 26, 2010

Facebook & Censorship

Seems that online censorship reared its ugly face again.  Many of you may know that I rebuilt my Facebook Fan Page about a month ago, because FB doesn't allow you to reclassify your fan pages (I had inadvertently placed mine in the "Local Business" category, rather than "Visual Artist."   I also placed a Facebook ad at the same time to promote the new fan page, using the attached image and asked people to join the Female Figure Art of Vincent Wolff.

Playboy 2004 CGOY Alicia Burley
This ad ran for several weeks, to a target audience 24 years and older that liked Elvgren, Vargas, & Playboy---I occasionally switched from Male & Female to Female only, but the other parameters were unchanged.  On Tuesday, I decided to add males again, and the ad went through a  review, as FB always does.  Wednesday morning, I got an e-mail the the ad was "disapproved," due to restrictions that had nothing to do with my ad.

So, I created a new ad, same image, same copy, same interests as before, except added "Nude Girls," and resubmitted.  Again, the ad was rejected, some of the reasons being (but not limited to) that the image is 'irrelevant or inappropriate'.

Now, Facebook is a large social network, and many people of various age groups and backgrounds are members.  You can't please everyone.  I just find it disingenuous that they originally approved the ad (more than once), but now find it distasteful.  While I have mostly samples of my nude art on FB, all of the 'parts' in question have been blocked out with white boxes so as to to offend people.  Besides, if you saw my ad for the Fan Page, you were pretty much interested in seeing this type of art.


I'm not going to rail against Facebook; it is their site, their rules, and frankly, this saves me some money by not running the ad.  I only wish to know why the ad was approved several times before, then suddenly it no longer conforms.

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On another topic, there is a great site called the PinupDirectory; it is a collection of some of the greatest pin-up artists, models and more.  I'd love to be a part of it, and if you would like to see me there, please ask them to add www.erotic-pinups.com to their site.  The 'suggestion box' is located at http://www.pinupdirectory.com/suggest-a-link/ .

Thanks all.

2 comments:

  1. Sir, I sympathize with your confusion, but there is this to consider also: it is strong evidence if not proof positive there is some deliberation, some intention to social monitoring and modification involved with Facebook and the like. The Constitution of our land says the people are to be safe from unreasonable searches by the government, it never said a word about the government (or the powers that sponsor the government) refraining from exploiting what the people are fool enough to give away about themselves in the process of exploiting a free ( the synonym for free? bait ) social networking service. The power of those bad boy Cray's the government runs cannot be overstated, I'm sure this little note will have been analyzed and result in a modification to some numerical "threat-index" attached to my name ten minutes after it is posted, but oh well. Just cause they know that we know doesn't mean anything can (or should) really be done about it.

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  2. Well, as I stated, Cyranos, I have more of an issue with Facebook first approving the ad, then disapproving it. A friend suggested that someone complained; I can't say one way or the other.
    However , I put less stock into government monitoring and more into Mark Zuckerberg lining his pockets with more money

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