Meta’s content advisory council has clarified its ‘Nudity and Adult Sexual Activity’ policy to prevent discrimination against transgender and non-binary people on its social media.
Meta limits the publication of images that show nudity or sexual activity on its social networks (Facebook and Instagram) because it is sensitive content not suitable for all users, and because these publications may be non-consensual images or videos or of minors.
There are exceptions to posting nudity, as nudity can be shared for educational or medical purposes, to raise awareness for a cause, or as a form of protest. The clearest example of what is allowed are images or videos that help raise awareness and alert about breast cancer.
However, as it stands, it was based “on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies. Such an approach leaves unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary, and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make quick, subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is impractical when moderating content on a large scale.” noted the Content Advisory Council in its latest report.
This note comes after the review of two cases, which the Council has considered jointly, regarding two independent publications made from the same Instagram account, one in 2021 and another in 2022, by a couple who identify as transgender and non binary
In the two images, the couple appears with “the naked torso and the covered nipples”, and the accompanying texts discuss medical care for transgender people and about the fact that a member of the couple was going to undergo gender affirmation surgery, for which, in addition, they had started a financing campaign.
The Instagram automatic systems were activated with the two publications, which also received complaints from some users. This prompted further verification to identify possible violations of community standards, which resulted in the removal of the posts. This measure was justified by the presence of breasts and a link to a fundraising page.
“The Advisory Council determines that the elimination of These posts are not in line with community standards, values, or responsibilities.s of human rights of Meta”, he points out in his report, and even points out that “he has constantly said that Meta must be sensitive about how its policies impact people subject to discrimination”.
The Council has taken the opportunity to point out another deficiency that it has detected in the policy, different from the one that refers to the reviewed case, for which it considers that Meta “you should also examine whether the policy on nudity and adult sexual activity protects against non-consensual sharing of images”.
The prohibited Instagram emojis that could cause an account to be blocked
In recent months, Meta has implemented increasingly strict rules on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp that are aimed at preventing the dissemination of content that is associated with sexual services or that has offensive language linked to these topics. This as a measure to protect all its users and especially minors who use the brand’s social platforms.
Within the framework of this initiative, Meta has been updating its Community Standards and generating tools to report all publications that violate the criteria established by Mark Zuckerberg’s company. Also, the company has improved the systems to analyze posts, photos, videos, messages and other elements that could have potential violations of sexual content.
“We take these measures to prevent any type of activity that may involve trafficking, coercion and non-consensual sexual acts from being facilitated,” Meta said at the time through a post on Facebook’s transparency website.
Despite the fact that Meta has tried to communicate its new policies to users, many of them are still unaware that they now have to be more careful with the content they share and the topics they propose on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp chat profiles. In fact, nowadays the company has already included some emoticons that have been called “commonly sexual emojis”.
Is there a list of emojis and words for which they can block your Instagram account?
However, it should be noted that so far Meta has not presented a specific list with ‘forbidden’ emojis that, when used, could cause an Instagram or Facebook account to be blocked.
Therefore, it is worth reiterating that currently users of social networks must start to refrain from sending messages with explicit texts and images that are accompanied by emojis that help reinforce the erotic connotation of that post. Since the sanction does not apply against the use of a specific emoticon, but in the context that any emoji is used.
At the moment, Meta has only set a series of criteria to detect and evaluate the publications that could violate the restrictions against sexual content. The company’s bet is to combine different elements in order to determine precisely what content is really dealing with sexual issues.
Precisely for this reason, the first filter will be the handling of explicit language in the content and later the emojis, photos or videos that accompany the content would be evaluated.
It should be noted that a couple of months ago Meta also incorporated new measures to prevent adults with malicious intent from establishing contact with underage users..
*With information from Europa Press
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Meta prepares a change for nudity on Facebook and Instagram