Facebook comes down hard on birth photos even after clarifying it has "long allowed...educational and scientific photos of the human body..."

Emma Kwasnica, one of the women who has repeatedly been harassed by Facebook for sharing breastfeeding photos, is currently serving a 7 day ban from public posting on the network for sharing a series of photos of the birth of her fourth child in a closed educational group on breastfeeding and birth.

Facebook staff still routinely remove breastfeeding photos even though it has committed to allowing them on the network, as documented over the last 18 months here in this space.

CBC Vancouver reports Tina Spenst was blocked from posting for sharing this photo of her breastfeeding her child at the 2013 Vancouver Dyke march.

Just as there are many active breastfeeding advocates and educators on Facebook providing both professional and peer-to-peer support for breastfeeding moms, the birthing community is also active on the network. Moms spend a lot of time on Facebook and they turn to virtual communities for support and information about birth and breastfeeding.

The photo series Emma shared is lovely - they are images documenting Emma's youngest baby's first moments after birth. She is lying skin-to-skin on Emma's chest, just prior to her first latch. The photos document normal physiological birth, something many women never get to experience or even see in our medicalized birthing world, and Emma shared them for this reason. But many birth and breastfeeding educators aren't sharing images like this with the moms they serve - the popular Facebook page Birth Without Fear voluntarily took down a breastfeeding photo last April after telling its readers about 5 bans in 6 weeks. They later called on Facebook to follow its own terms and conditions and to stop removing breastfeeding and birth-related images.

Many of the photos that are removed are shared in the moments after birth and if they happen to include a bare breast, Facebook's overall obsession with keeping nipples off the network usually trumps its desire to allow women to share the images.

As often happens, other women have stepped up in solidarity with Emma and have also received various sanctions from Facebook. I'm serving another 30 day ban. Jesusa Ricoy-Orlariaga, a UK-based childbirth educator who runs the 3 Colours empowering women, empowering birth page on Facebook, was also banned and has launched a campaign urging Facebook users to share nipple images to protest Facebook's gender discrimination. The hashtag is #NOTyourwhoreyourmother.

3 Colours launches campaign to highlight Facebook's gender discrimination

In June 2013, Facebook clarified its nudity policies in response to a 20,000 strong petition protesting its removal of mastectomy photos (something we've frequently mentioned here as part of our campaign to get Facebook to fix its systems).

ABC News reported Facebook says it has long allowed mastectomy photos and removals are only happening occasionally, in error. Its statement to ABC is below (bold emphasis is mine):

"We have long allowed mastectomy photos to be shared on Facebook, as well as educational and scientific photos of the human body and photos of women breastfeeding,” Facebook said in a prepared statement. “We only review or remove photos after they have been reported to us by people who see the images in their News Feeds or otherwise discover them. On occasion, we may remove a photo showing mastectomy scarring either by mistake, as our teams review millions of pieces of content daily, or because a photo has violated our terms for other reasons. As a reminder, our terms stipulate that we generally do not allow nudity, with some exceptions as laid out above and here, consistent with other platforms that have many young users.”

But despite a new specific policy on mastectomy photos, Facebook has yet to amend its overall nudity policy as laid out in its Community Guidelines, the document we are all referred to when we are deemed to have violated them and are faced with a ban.

Given the changes Facebook has made over the years related to the sharing of breastfeeding images and mastectomy images and the many calls for more clarity around its policies, an update to its Community Guidelines clarifying its intent to make education and scientific photos of the human body exempt from its Nudity and Pornography clause is badly needed.

Facebook also touched on one of the problems it has created with its poorly-worded policies and flawed implementing of its photo reporting system in its remarks to ABC - it frequently notes it only removes photos after they are reported by other users.

What Facebook doesn't acknowledge is many of these reports are from cyberbullies and trolls who are exploiting Facebook's flawed systems.

Facebook shields the identity of those who report photos from those who share them, and it further shields the identity of the reporters from the people who are administrators of pages and groups. This provides a cloak of anonymity which is then exploited by people who harass their target through multiple photo reports. Facebook then rewards the cyberbully by punishing the victim, first through the removal, and then by blaming the victim by telling the world they're just responding to the concerns of other users who don't like the image being shared. It has not taken steps to fix the problems created when users have photos removed in error. I routinely get 30 day bans for any photo-sharing "offense."

Recently the woman who ran Zen Parenting on Facebook closed down the page after experiencing at least five bans for sharing breastfeeding images and a concentrated attack by cyberbullies. She said she wouldn't stay because Facebook wouldn't help her deal with an aggressive campaign against her family by anonymous trolls.

Emma Kwasnica and many others have been calling for Facebook to fix these problem for years and although Facebook has made some changes including some wording changes to their policy, and a new beta reporting system they hope will help users understand why their photos have been reported, more changes are badly needed.

A Facebook vs. Breastfeeding alliance has been formed to continue to push Facebook for better policies. The alliance wants a Facebook Team to be assigned to breastfeeding to protect breastfeeding moms and also to protect educators and advocates from the problems they face when using the network to support moms. Suggestions have been made on how the reporting system could be improved, and Emma is now calling for Facebook to give page and group administrators tools to deal with the cyberbullies who exploit the flawed reporting system. Facebook has faced repeated criticism for governing its network in a way that makes it appear to be discriminating against women. It's been accused of promoting a rape culture against women and after major advertisers threatened to pull ads in May 2013, it promised to step up its policing and remove gender-related hate speech from its pages.

It's not enough to crack down on the rape-culture pages and images. Facebook needs to embrace the sharing of breastfeeding and birthing images - positive, life-affirming images that will show the world it is serious about its mission to:

"provide a platform where people can share and surface content, messages and ideas freely, while still respecting the rights of others. When people can engage in meaningful conversations and exchanges with their friends, family and communities online, amazingly positive things can happen."

The educators and advocates who work on Facebook to help women experience joyous births and success at meeting their breastfeeding goals will be the first to say that when Facebook is supportive of their efforts, meaningful conversations and exchanges with community do allow amazingly positive things to happen. They want Facebook to work with them to make sure this continues.

Facebook removed the photo on the left and issued a 7 day ban to Emma Kwasnica for sharing it. They reviewed the middle photo and initially allowed it to remain but then later removed it. The third photo (note the nipple is slightly covered by the blanket) is currently allowed to remain after review.

Update - even as I was writing this blog post, Facebook was issuing a slap on the wrist to the admins of FB vs. Breastfeeding for sharing this image after Facebook removed it from another page. Yes, that's a child breastfeeding a dolly:

Shame on you Facebook for shaming children and
mothers who breastfeed.

This is the notice the FB vs. Breastfeeding admins received after sharing the above
image of a child breastfeeding a dolly.