Norway’s prime minister joined a campaign by a Norwegian newspaper on Friday accusing Facebook Inc of undue censorship by barring a Vietnam War era news photograph showing a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack.
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“Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have chose to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed”, a spokesperson for the world’s largest social network said in an email to AFP.
Captured in 1972 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its center. “It limits the freedom of speech”, Solberg wrote.
Solberg in her posting also praised Facebook for combating pictures of child abuse.
“Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such pictures”. By Saturday morning the post was restored on the Norwegian premier’s Facebook page. I wish today’s children will also have the opportunity to see and learn from historical mistakes and events.
On the decision to delete the prime minister’s post, Mr Hansen told the Guardian: “At least they don’t discriminate, we have to give them credit for that”.
When Aftenposten reported the ban and shared the picture again, they reportedly received an email from Facebook demanding it to be taken down or pixelised in conjunction with its nudity guidelines.
Rolv Erik Ryssdal added: “It is not acceptable”.
Norway is a big investor in Facebook.
“We are talking about the prerequisite for independent journalism”.
A Facebook spokeswoman then said: “While we recognise that this photo is iconic, it’s hard to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others”.
Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have chose to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.
“We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward”.
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The social network has taken a firm stance against harmless comedy meme pages, deleting and then reinstating the popular anti-SJW page “Meninist,” removing anti-Hillary Clinton comedy pages, and even sanctioning page admins for uploading pictures of the rapper Drake morphed into a Nintendo 64 controller, forcing Facebook’s top comedy creators to start a revolt against the social network.
