Melbourne - Australian mothers are infuriated by Facebook’s decision to suspend their accounts because they posted breastfeeding photographs of themselves on the site.
They have organised a protest at Facebook’s Australian offices next week, News.com.au reported.
Sydneysider Lucy Allen, 21, had her Facebook account deactivated for two days in July last year after she posted a photo of herself breastfeeding and pumping milk at the same time.
“Facebook didn’t actually give me a reason,” Allen said.
“They just said it was a breach of their terms of use.”
Allen insisted that she had used the image to give a visual example to new mothers.
“I use the photo a lot to give new mothers a visual example of how it’s done,” she said.
Allen revealed that she had since re-uploaded the photo and till now Facebook had not taken it down again.
Facebook’s terms of use state that users are not allowed to post content that is hateful, pornographic, contains nudity or incites violence.
It also reserves the right to do away with any content that infringes or violates another's rights or the law.
The policy has led to the creation of a group, “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”, which this week alone had 257,000 supporters removed from its social networking site internationally.
Stay-at-home mum April Bevin, 24, is another joining the “Boob Out” protest, which will be held at Facebook’s Sydney offices in King Street at noon on February 7.
Facebook removed Bevin’s breastfeeding images late last year as they had been deemed sexually explicit and pornographic.
Presently, 391 people have been recorded as having had breastfeeding photos removed by Facebook, according to website Tera.ca which was set up to collect all the images Facebook has
taken down.
Of those, 375 have been temporarily banned from using Facebook - at times more than once.
Founder of the site, Paul Rappapport, said that there are probably more women who have been banned from Facebook than have actually been collected, explaining that he can only collect images of mothers who have reported the take down to him.
Facebook asserted that breastfeeding photos were removed only after they were brought to the social networking site’s attention by other users who report them as violations.
Today : Sunday - May 27, 2012, 10:52am (GMT+5.5)
