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Facebook Staff Scour Site for Objectionable Images
May 13, 2009

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News Summary

Some employees of the popular social-networking site Facebook have the full-time job of scanning the images posted to user pages and deleting those that are explicitly sexual or contain images of underage drinking or illicit drug use, Newsweek reports in its May 18 issue.

Facebook officials have developed detailed criteria on what can and cannot be depicted on user pages as the company seeks to make the site as advertiser-friendly as possible. On the sex side, there are semiformal guidelines like the "Fully Exposed Butt Rule" and the "Nipple Rule," while company policy also prohibits photos such as a girl blowing a cloud of marijuana smoke or an underage youth holding liquor bottles.

Some prohibited content is found with software-aided searches, but users also can flag pictures or other material they object to for investigation.

"If [Facebook] got polluted as just a place for wild and crazy kids, that would destroy the ability to achieve the ultimate vision, which is to create a service for literally everyone," said David Kirkpatrick, author of the soon-to-be-published book "The Facebook Effect."

About 150 of Facebook's 850 employees help police the site. In addition to deleting objectionable content, they also fight spammers and work with law-enforcement agencies to investigate crimes where victims' or perpetrators' sites can provide valuable clues and information.

Unlike some other social-networking sites, Facebook requires users to sign up using their real names, making policing easier.

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by Bob Cornet on 14 May 09 08:10 AM EDT
I hope they are also looking at the content of the sites, as well as the pictures. A number of the sites actually espouse underage drinking; you wouldn't know that by simply looking at the art.

Posted by APF on 18 May 09 12:41 PM EDT
I have tried repeatedly to get Facebook to take down drinking group pages because their creators and most of the members are high school students but they refuse saying that "we don't take down groups just because you disagree with them"--they seem to ignore my argument that the groups encourage illegal behavior which is against their guidelines for creating groups. If anyone has any suggestions about how else I can tackle this please post it.

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