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

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

#71

Post by lostapathy »

pushpop wrote: post #50
geddy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apples aren’t specifically designed to kill people. You don’t have mass school shootings where dozens of kids are attacked by apples and suicides caused by apples are significantly fewer than those by guns. The two aren’t even remotely equatable.

Lots of guns aren’t designed to kill people either.

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

#72

Post by nickthegreek »

notacoward wrote: post #66
deftturtle wrote: post #31

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?

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.

I have a friend who is transitioning f2m and recently had top surgery. They were extremely excited that being topless was no longer a crime. It helped put some things into perspective for me.

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

#74

Post by jschwartzi »

Johnny555 wrote: post #20

How will they even police this? If I say "Hey come over for dinner tonight :eggplant:", is that sexual innuendo or am I making my famous eggplant parmigiana?

Guess I can't make my peach baba ghanoush anymore.

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

#76

Post by journalctl »

giarc wrote: post #56
warent wrote: post #6

I'm not really sure what group they're catering to here. Everyone who is at least 12 years old knows what those emoji mean. My guess is they must be doing this in order to help protect women from sexual harassment. What they're really doing here is trying to ban an entire way of thinking. That's just not going to happen.

I wonder if it is also to prevent solicitation of sex on their platform. I wonder if there was a code of emojis used to agree on terms. Which banning the use of these emojis just means they use something else. Whack a mole.

People have been subverting language for about as long as there has been language. It’s incredibly difficult to police and a losing battle anyway. There are infinite possibilities for encoding other meanings into words, and if two or more people agree out-of-band to use covert communication, you can’t really stop them short of preventing all communication entirely.

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

#77

Post by rlt »

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #59
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The key factor is the arbitrary sexual moral of the country where FB is headquartered.

I think it's more about the sexual morals of the countries where the majority of users are located.

That said, I think it's silly. They're a technology company that should be able to come up with a technical solution. Twitter handles nudity just fine.

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

#78

Post by journalctl »

geddy wrote: post #34
sschueller wrote: post #19

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.

I don’t know, the rest of the developed world doesn’t want to live with gun violence, and they... don’t. Your argument is absurd, though, because most knives and apples aren’t designed to kill people, and serve other purposes. You can prevent access to one thing (like pipe bombs) without preventing access to other things (like knives). As always, intent and purpose matter, and it’s not all-or-nothing.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

giarc wrote: post #53
qnsi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is everyone's reaction to this, and why this article is gaining traction on HN

But it's true. It seems like this policy change would prevent a consenting couple from "flirting" over Facebook by using emoji's but would allow a politican to create false content for an ad.

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by wishinghand »

mic47 wrote: post #58
wishinghand wrote: post #10

Does this apply to private chats? Because I'll send these in a joking way to my girlfriend and some of my other friends. I know that Facebook messenger parses chats and won't allow porn site links and torrent magnet links to go through.

I guess this applies to reported content, and maybe for content for wider audience (like public post / group / ...)? I.e. if you send eggplant to your GF via chat, and she does not report you, it's fine. But if she receives private eggplant sex message from some rando and she report him, that should count as violation.

I'm totally fine with that system, where they can choose to report. But I'm also a guy who's never had to deal with sexual harassment, so maybe it can be already on for non-friends at the least?
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