Facebook Mistakes Woman's Elbow for Breast

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US


Facebook likes to keep a lid on inappropriate content. Though it deals with an astronomical amount of user-generated content, the site tries to stay on top of things and remove anything offensive. However, it's not a perfect system, as Theories of The Deep Understanding of Things recently discovered. The site posted the picture below to Facebook to see if the site could differentiate between elbows and breasts. Apparently it can't


"So, Here's last night's FB alertness test results: FB moderators can't tell an elbow from a dangerous, filthy, uncanny and violent female breast," the web magazine wrote on its own Facebook page. "No questions were asked and the post is down. Imagine our surprise."

While they might have a point regarding 'no questions were asked,' the picture is rather deceiving. Most of us here at Tom's assumed it was a woman in a bathtub flashing her breasts when only looking at the thumbnail. Upon closer inspection, we realised that they were elbows. Still, is it so much to ask that Facebook at least look at the photo in question properly before removing it? Facebook even revealed in a later email to the poster that it was a member of the team removed the 'offending' photo (as opposed to a system that removes content first and asks questions later). In the end, following extensive media coverage, the photo was restored.

"Dozens of our posts were removed and some of our personal accounts were blocked and even shut down due to "guidelines violations", but we have never received any letters such as this one here," the magazine wrote, posting a screenshot of Facebook's email. "It's nice to know that tons of media-exposure (from the Daily Mail to the The Huffington Post, from Nigeria to Portugal) can actually make FB be a little more sensible, or maybe a little more worried."

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