Live data from Hacker News

‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

nypost.com

61–70 of 163 posts

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#61
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god nude photos where male nipples cover female nipples are still fine.

It’s a shame they don’t allow female nipples but allow male nipples. Clear cut sexism, and is there no way to sue them?

They do allow female nipples, if breastfeeding. I've seen numerous breastfeeding videos/photos get shared with nipple exposed or one of the two breasts completely exposed and report them just to see what will happen, they are always allowed to remain stating it does not violate the community standards.

Similarly they seem to allow people to post comments like "why don't you use your guns to kill yourself" and "I hope you f*cking die" which are actual comments I've had when commenting on posts where the second amendment is being attacked, report them, and get facebook telling me an hour or days later that they did not violate community standards. I even had some in my messenger inbox before and got the blah blah blah it's ok, you can block them if you want message.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#62

Why not also ban the gun emoji? Oh wait this is an American company where violence is OK but sex is taboo.

Apple unilaterally decided that the pistol emoji actually refers to a water pistol. Most other vendors followed suit a year or two later. IMO this was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Someone on iOS could text their classmate something innocuous like "Can't wait for the school's field trip to the water park tomorrow!". If the recipient was also on iOS, they'd see a squirt gun. If the classmate was on Android, they'd get a very different impression.

Side note, does HN not support non-ASCII characters? It looks like the actual emoji was stripped from my comment

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#63
post #34

Why not also ban the gun emoji? Oh wait this is an American company where violence is OK but sex is taboo.

Yeah let's pretend guns don't exist. Knives exist too, those are weapons, better ban them. You could throw apples at someone for long enough and probably hurt them a good bit, better ban them too. The sterilized world you want to live in is not necessarily the one that everyone else wants to live in.

Same old argument. Why isn't everything legal then? Why not make all explosives legal? Nuclear weapons?

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#64
post #37
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god nude photos where male nipples cover female nipples are still fine.

You’re getting downvoted yet you’re making a very clear point of inequality. Maybe this is where the American (Facebook) and European (myself) cultures differ but here it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be topless in much the same way as how it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to be topless.

That's not Europe vs America, that's some parts of Europe vs the rest of the world.

Public nudity is very much the exception globally not the rule. But it's interesting what selective stuff people give the US credit.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#65

If Facebook really wanted to stop this they could make the eggplant less phallic looking or remove it entirely. Almost no one is going on Facebook to actually talk about eggplant. They don't want users to have the same plausible deniability when sharing a cartoon wiener that they had when adding a cartoon wiener as an option. And honestly, it is probably for the better that sexual harassment via eggplant is now expli…

This is what I find most confusing. If Facebook’s goal is to decrease the frequency of the eggplant & peach emojis being used as sexual references there are a million ways to “nudge” users in that direction. Make the eggplant & peach emojis sliced and I bet they’d just about disappear. Why police content, especially this content that seems like a total non-issue, when they’re in the middle of a giant PR campaign tryi…

" Someone who wants to sexually harass a person via Facebook isn’t going to be deterred because they might get reported (and then... presumably nothing?) for sending an emoji." No, but person reviewing such reported content now have in their guideline that emojis count too and know what to do.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#66
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god nude photos where male nipples cover female nipples are still fine.

It’s a shame they don’t allow female nipples but allow male nipples. Clear cut sexism, and is there no way to sue them?

It's even worse when you consider how it's based in binary gender thinking. Are a transgender person's nipples allowed, or not? It ends up being such a mess. A gender-neutral standard would be better.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#67
post #64
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted yet you’re making a very clear point of inequality. Maybe this is where the American (Facebook) and European (myself) cultures differ but here it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be topless in much the same way as how it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to be topless.

That's not Europe vs America, that's some parts of Europe vs the rest of the world. Public nudity is very much the exception globally not the rule. But it's interesting what selective stuff people give the US credit.

It’s not just Europe though. For example Australia has similar sensibilities too.

Maybe a more accurate description might be: countries predominantly atheist verses countries which are not.

Regardless of you want to define it, a female nipple is still no more offensive than a male one.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame they don’t allow female nipples but allow male nipples. Clear cut sexism, and is there no way to sue them?

I would guess that the key factor is whether or not a body part is significantly erogenous. AFAIK, many more women than men find their nipples to be a source of sexual arousal. EDIT: I hope people reading my post understand the difference between explaining vs. endorsing another party's reasoning.

I like having my neck and ears touched. Should we ban those too?

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame they don’t allow female nipples but allow male nipples. Clear cut sexism, and is there no way to sue them?

They do allow female nipples, if breastfeeding. I've seen numerous breastfeeding videos/photos get shared with nipple exposed or one of the two breasts completely exposed and report them just to see what will happen, they are always allowed to remain stating it does not violate the community standards. Similarly they seem to allow people to post comments like "why don't you use your guns to kill yourself" and "I hope…

This seems to suggest that the content moderation policy is rather arbitrary, which makes sense if you recall that Facebook uses underpaid contractors in struggling countries to do a lot of this work.

Re: ‘Sexual’ use of eggplant and peach emojis banned on Facebook, Instagram

#70
post #64
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted yet you’re making a very clear point of inequality. Maybe this is where the American (Facebook) and European (myself) cultures differ but here it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be topless in much the same way as how it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to be topless.

That's not Europe vs America, that's some parts of Europe vs the rest of the world. Public nudity is very much the exception globally not the rule. But it's interesting what selective stuff people give the US credit.

I do agree to an extent, but the USA has a way more prudish stance on nudity than anywhere in most of the western world.
Post reply on HN