Remember when Meta had to apologize for making a "distinction between male and female bodies?"
Well, good news... Meta is freeing the nipple!
Meta has been told to clarify their old-fashioned policies surrounding nudity on their social media platforms.
Meta's Oversight Board, an external body that oversees content moderation for Facebook and Instagram, is now saying the platform should allow users to display their bare breasts, BUT only if they're transgender or non-binary.
Really giving the people what they want...
This ruling comes after the controversy of removing a trans couple's topless picture, which was later reinstated.
Meta came out saying their common sense nudity policy was bad, confusing, and subjective because, clearly, no one really knows what to do about trans and non-binary folk.
So, in the name of fairness and equality, trans and non-binary users should obviously be able to show their naked bodies without censorship or penalty, but real women are not.
The statement from the board read:
The same image of female-presenting nipples would be prohibited if posted by a cisgender woman, but permitted if posted by an individual self-identifying as non-binary. The Board also notes additional nipple-related exceptions based on contexts of protest, birth giving, after birth and breastfeeding which it did not examine here.
The Oversight Board is made up of academics, journalists, and politicians who condemned the company's prior approach to flagging images of breasts because it reflected an outdated view of gender and sex.
The board said:
This policy is based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies. Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale.
From now on, Meta will rely on "human reviewers" to determine whether or not a user is allowed to show their breasts based on that person's gender identity.
We are back to assuming gender, I guess.
But how is someone supposed to assume the gender of someone who keeps changing it?
