• Instagram bans certain hashtags to make pornography harder to find. But why did the company ban #Easter and #Kansas?

  • Daisy Dumas for the Sydney Morning Herald lays out a handful of notable Facebook and Instagram posts recently pulled down for violating decency standards. Among these censored posts are photos of modern and pop art, ethnographic study photos of Aboriginal women, and a cake mildly resembling a nipple. The same week those posts were pulled, “images of Kim Kardashian, naked but for smears of white body paint” remained uncensored. While Facebook’s Nudity Policy is easily accessed, the precise criteria used to identify and censor that nudity is harder to come by.

  • “My conservative page got blocked by Facebook”: Fox News & Commentary radio host Todd Starnes speaks out about Facebook censoring a seemingly innocuous post about his personal values.

  • In the Spectator, Brendan O'Neill writes: "We’re witnessing a massive shift in the whole idea of the internet; from an open platform for the discussion of ideas to something that must be moderated and editorialised. Some argue that, as privately owned platforms, Facebook and Twitter are free to publish or take down anything they like. But it’s more complicated than that. These are vast entities. A full seventh of humanity uses Facebook. This gives it historically unprecedented clout."

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jillian C. York

Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work lies at the intersection of technology and policy. Based in Berlin, she serves of the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she works on issues of free expression, privacy, and digital security.