Meta’s Oversight Board is calling for an overhaul of Facebook and Instagram’s nudity policies, saying rules around when female nipples can be shown are “confusing” in a statement on January 17…
— from an article by Sawdah Bhaimiya on BusinessInsider.com, January 19, 2023.
I really had no intention, to write about nipples this morning.
My intention was to discuss the behavior of Russian Internet trolls. Since they are back in the news as the 2024 election cycle gets underway.
The family-friendly movies we’ve been offered lately make ‘trolls’ appear as honest, upstanding individuals who are willing to fight for truth, liberty, and the American Dream.
That is not the case with Russian Internet trolls. (Or as they are known in Russia, Тролли из Ольгино.)
During my research, I ran across a story about American lawyer and business executive Elliot Schrage, who — as we all know — used to be the vice president in change of global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook, where he directed the company’s government affairs and public relations efforts.
Government affairs and public relations were not, as it turns out, Mr. Schrage’s strong suit.
According to this story (if you can believe anything you read, nowadays) Mr. Schrage was invited, as a representative of his company, to participate in a panel discussion at Harvard University, following the 2016 Presidential election. It appeared, at the time of the panel discussion, that Facebook had made a bundle of money selling political ads during the campaign to an organization with the innocent-sounding name, Internet Research Agency.
The organization’s actual name was Агентство интернет-исследований.
Facebook did not realize, at the time (according to Mr. Schrage) that Агентство интернет-исследований was effectively inserting ‘news’ into America’s media landscape, and that, possibly, 126 million Facebook users had been exposed to ‘news’ that was totally fabricated. Which might not be that unusual, except that when Americans want to read fake news, we like to know it’s coming from real Americans.
During the Harvard panel, the moderator asked Mr. Schrage:
“At what point did you recognize there was a problem with fake news?”
Mr. Schrage replied:
“The issue of our role as a news dissemination organization is something that really surfaced over the course of the past year.”
Mr. Schrage followed that remark with a distressing story about how Facebook has been struggling with female nipples. That is to say, posted photographs that included female nipples. It seems that Facebook has consistently allowed male users to appear bare-chested in posted photos, with their nipples entirely exposed. Females, meanwhile, are allowed to display practically their entire body, except for their nipples. Facebook considers it a “safety issue” to censor the display of female nipples.
Meanwhile, Facebook was (slowly) recognizing that some photos that included female nipples were related to actual news stories. (Not fake news stories; real news stories.). On top of that, we Americans have a vague desire to embrace equality.
I can fully understand why Mr. Schrage was drawing a connection between fake news posted by Russian trolls, and the problem of female nipples. Both things are, in a way, “safety concerns.” And both were — in 2016 — basically being left up to the discernment of computer algorithms.
It’s hard enough for me, as a semi-intelligent human being, to tell the difference between a male nipple and a female nipple. Can you imagine what a challenge it must be, for a computer algorithm?
What Mr. Schrage was not able to fully explain is why Facebook allowed misleading advertising, posted by Russian trolls, but didn’t allow female nipples. At that point in the Harvard panel discussion, Kathleen Carroll, the former executive editor for the Associated Press, offered the following observation:
“Can I just say that news judgment is a lot more complicated than nipples?”
We might suggest, however, that Ms. Carroll — in spite of her years of experience as a news editor — is wrong about how complicated nipples have become.
As we all know, many Americans have recently declared themselves to be ‘gender neutral’. Neither male nor female; but rather, a combination of both. Presumably, then, their nipples are also ‘neutral’.
Additionally, some people who were once male have become female. And vice versa. We must assume that the nipples have also changed identity.
Can we expect a computer algorithm to tell the difference?
I think not.
Even I can’t tell the difference.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was not submitted by Russian trolls.]
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.