Entertainment

Facebook's 'Bikini Jailbait' and 'I Hate Teen Moms' Pages Are OK, Breastfeeding Still Not

EntertainmentPublished Oct 29, 2012
By Linda Sharps
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I've grown a little weary of the topic of whether certain Facebook content should be banned or not, but considering there are 1.01 billion people using the site each month and it's highly unlikely we're all going to agree on what is and is not offensive any time soon, I'm sure it's going to keep popping up. Today's outrage du jour? Two controversial Facebook pages: 'I Hate Teen Moms,' and 'Bikini Jailbait.'

Both are under fire, although they don't have a whole lot in common. The Teen Moms page is generating a number of hateful comments accusing teen mothers of being “sluts” and a “burden on society," while the Bikini Jailbait page is jam-packed with photos of underaged girls in various states of undress, some in suggestive poses.

Interestingly, Facebook's response to the outrage thus far is that user-created pages are a "mirror of the diversity of people using the site."

Facebook's community standards clearly state that harassment and hate speech are not allowed, yet the 26,000-strong I Hate Teen Moms page (which currently appears to be private) refers to children as "crotch droppings" in its description, and includes comments that say teen mothers should be killed along with their babies. The page's administrator insists the content is “satire and dark humor,” while Facebook has responded to complaints by claiming that the page is a "mirror of the diversity of people using the site" and "gives people around the world the power to publish their own stories."

Okay then. It's just diverse, not hateful. Got it.

As for Bikini Jailbait, it's a page dedicated to sharing racy photos of young girls, from deliberately provocative photos to seemingly clandestine upskirt shots. Daily Mail says the page has been taken down, but I can see it just fine (if you click through, watch you don't follow any links -- it looks like a porn/spam portal to me). The photos are certainly revealing, but seem carefully hand-picked (ew) to circumvent Facebook's nudity and pornography rules.

Note that Facebook's current standards now include this:

(...) we aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo's David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.

I say again, interesting. I mean, considering the subjects Facebook has banned recently for violating their terms of use: photos of mothers breastfeeding, images from the Breast Cancer Awareness Body Painting Project, the last family pictures of a dying baby, professional shots of a woman's torso after a mastectomy -- and, let's not forget, photos of a knitted baby hat called a "Boobie Beanie."

I know that it must be insanely difficult to monitor all the reports that Facebook users generate, and I certainly don't envy Facebook the task of determining what's pornography and what's hate speech and all of those thorny issues. Still, some of their decisions seem bizarrely inconsistent. A photo peeking up the skirt of what seems to be a 12-year-old girl is fine, but a knitted hat isn't? A site dedicated to berating and humiliating an entire group of people is "mirroring diversity," while a family's dying infant is offensive?

I don't know what the answer is. It almost seems like it would be easier if Facebook just allowed all content (within age restrictions, I suppose), instead of trying to police what people post. Their policy could be one line: Don't like it? Don't look at it. End of story.

What do you think about these latest controversial Facebook pages? Do you think 'I Hate Teen Moms' and 'Bikini Jailbait' should be taken down?

Image via Facebook

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