He noted that maybe there is another version to this narrative behind Facebook’s move. As a result, the social networking site removed the photo that caused a wave of criticism on how it censored images.
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Hours after the pushback, Facebook reinstated the photo.
In a statement, the social media company said, “After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case”, according to Reuters.
“In this case, we recognise the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time”, it added.
The reversal underscores Facebook’s increasingly tricky position as an arbiter of mass media.
The social media network deleted a post made by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten based on the fact that the image contained child nudity.
After receiving a phone call from the Saigon photo editor, Hal Buell, AP’s executive news photo editor at the time, said that he discussed it with his colleagues “for 10-15 minutes”.
The Aftenposten’s charge comes as Facebook continues to dominate publication, providing the company with more leverage to control exactly what information its almost 2 billion users see.
Norwegian daily Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief, Espen Egil Hansen, wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saying the newspaper would not delete the image from its page. “Tomorrow, there will be another photo”.
Facebook quickly responded to the backlash.
A Facebook spokesman for the Nordic region didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
“Facebook’s Mission Statement states that your objective is to “make the world more open and connected”. For so many outlets who depend on Facebook (unfortunately) for a great deal of exposure, the step-by-step censoring means that both the publications – and the public – will ultimately suffer.
Hansen’s editorial raised questions about whether hard-and-fast rules executed through algorithms can be used universally to classify content on Facebook.
Egeland expressed delight in a Twitter message written in Norwegian after the Facebook about-face.
The minister of culture, Linda Cathrine Hofstad Helleland, tweeted that she planned a meeting next week between Norwegian editors and Facebook representatives. Back then, America maximized delivery of weapons to “Republic of Vietnam”.
Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg – who had earlier posted a copy of the photo on Facebook herself only to see it removed – welcomed the U-turn.
Solberg said the photo has helped shape world history and that “Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such images”.
Facebook’s moderators removed the photo from his page.
Egeland’s account was suspended for the post, and when Aftenposten wrote a story on the suspension and shared it on the paper’s Facebook page that too was deleted, the report said.
Just last week, Zuckerberg wryly said at a Facebook event in Germany: “we’re a tech company, we’re not a media company”.
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He goes on to say that ” free and independent media have an important task in bringing information, even including pictures, which sometimes may be unpleasant, and which the ruling elite and maybe even ordinary citizens can not bear to see or hear, but which might be important precisely for that reason”.
