Facebook has blocked Micke Kazarnowicz, administrator of the international Björn Borg fan page, for "pornographic content". The porn being Björn Borg fan images of people flaunting their Björn Borg underwear in various ways. The above snapshot being the most "pornographic" of the bunch shows two guys in the woods trying to reach their skivvies that hang from trees, note that you can't see any wobbly bits, but butt cheeks are clearly visible.
First, Facebook simply deleted the image, which had the 35 000 fans clicking "like" a lot and commenting even more, Micke Kazarnowicz notes the immediate problem for brands here is that fans may think it's Björn Borg who suddenly deleted the image. Then he decided to upload a facebook friendly (sans butt cheeks) version of the image, to explain the situation to fans, and suddenly he found his personal Facebook account banned.
Micke is confused.
This is the crux of the matter is: Facebook apparently has a very different assessment than we do about what is "pornographic content". There is no defined line, and when you're a brand engaged in underwear, this boundary drawing is at the same time vague and sometimes arbitrary. What is "offensive" here? Like other large companies (hi Google!) Facebook is a faceless giant that you can never talk to. Policies and guidelines applied from a tricky arbitrariness which often are based in the American mainstream morality. In this case they have fuzzy consequences if this would be repeated again. Will my personal account will be permanently blocked? Or will they erase Bjorn Borg's Facebook page, which we have invested money in several ways?
Related, our national treasure, and one of one of Sweden's foremost artists Anders Zorn was banned from Facebook as his paintings more often than not show nude women bathing. Adland was recently banned from Google adsense for showing butt cheeks, also reported in Dagens Media. The Sloggi ads that got us in trouble were posted in 2004. Eons ago we were banned from Paypal in 2004 for showing an Opium perfume ad in 2001.
There's a problem here, when advertisers use nudity and sex in advertising, while the 'new' advertising media owners reject nudity, advertising itself will soon be banned. ;)
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Save posts like this. In 5 years when Facebook is like Myspace we will think how cute the uproar was.
But in all fairness the content could be hosted off Facebook on a website and not have anyone say a thing. And if Facebook is concerned about porn they should try to erase the 10 million spam accounts that post porn links to any Brand Page aimed at 13 to 25 year old males. And trust me. There are tons of such links being posted every day from Spam accounts.
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Permalinkthe content could be hosted off Facebook on a website and not have anyone say a thing. Key words: why have your brand play in someone elses walled garden? "Everybody is there", yeah okay but then you have to follow a mad dictators rules which are enforced by a bot who can 'see' butts but not actual spam. ;)
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PermalinkLOL No shit!!!!
BTW rumor is that Facebook wants to hire Obama's ex-Press Secretary to get ready for a 2012 IPO. The good news is when they IPO they can not lie about data anymore and cherry pick what they choose to reveal. They have to expose everything because the public will be investing.
I estimated that if 10 of the 67 million US accounts that log in today spend 8 hours on the website. The other 57 million average only 3 mins on the website. Wouldn't marketers like to know that?
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PermalinkThis was on the Dorito's Fan Page today. I see them on many brand pages. I wrote Frito-Lay about this once and they sent me back a dumb form letter saying they have an Agency to to advise them. I was like really? Well you have 30 porn links on the first 3 pages of your fan page.
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PermalinkThat's another side-effect from the other side of "everybody is there" side of the coin : this includes porn-spammers! Sheesh, they sent you form-mail? Why invest in a facebook page if you don't care? Oh, that's right, because everybody is doing it. I forgot.
Trivia: That guy to the right is named Jacob, and his pal says: His butt has always gotten him into all sorts of trouble... ;-). Hahahaha!
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PermalinkToo true.
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