These Nipples Got The New Yorker Banned From Facebook

These Nipples Got The New Yorker Banned From Facebook


When Justin Timberlake ripped off part of Janet Jackson’s top at the end of the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, thus exposing her nipple, old ladies fainted, and the US regulator, the FCC, smote CBS for its moral failure. But there’s a new Nipplegate in town, and this time the transgressor is the smut rag known as the New Yorker, whose Facebook page was briefly banned when a cartoon showed a teeny tiny profane pair of uncensored nipples.

In this case the nipples were actually just black dots. And those little pencil marks violated Facebook’s “nudity and sex” community standards. Four nipples were actually pictured in the offending cartoon, but only two of the nipples in question made Facebook blush, because according to its policies, it does not allow “naked ‘private parts (haha, private parts) including female nipple bulges and naked butt cracks [but] male nipples are ok.”

In a blog post, the New Yorker pointed out the important distinction:

You’re waiting for the part where we tell you just kidding, and that the New Yorker actually posted a cartoon taken from a frame of a film entitled “Backdoor Sluts IX.” But we’re not, which makes it totally ridiculous. Is there an intern that thinks very literally who was responsible for this over at Facebook? Because even a nipple-detection algorithm would have ignored this.

The page has been restored, but not before we got to point and laugh at Facebook for being such prudes. Listen Facebook, if that’s how you’re going to roll, we have a few more nips we’d like you to address. [The New Yorker]


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