Moms who say they're tired of Facebook censoring their breastfeeding pictures are taking their breasts out in protest.
Sure, they could have boycotted the social networking giant by logging off for a few days. They even could have changed their profile pictures for the day. But instead, these moms hit the streets, breastfeeding outside of Facebook's offices around the world.
"It's time for Facebook to see us and hear us," Sarah Rockwell told the Houston Chronicle. She helped organize the protest. "Us being in their foyer matters to them."
And what better way to organize the "nurse-in" than using Facebook? Midwife Emma Kwasnica launched an "official petition" through a Facebook group called, "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!"
"This is discrimination," Kwasnica tells the Houston Chronicle. "There's no other way to look at it. We're being treated as pornographers. Breast-feeding moms, especially ones with infants, spend hours a day with their children at their breast. They're not trying to be sexually explicit. This is just part of their everyday lives."
Kwasnica tells the Chronicle she's had about 30 of her breastfeeding photos flagged as inappropriate in the last five years. She also says her account has been shut down four times -- and that one of those times it was down for 30 days!
Facebook says it doesn't proactively remove breastfeeding pics; it only does so when another user has flagged the image as inappropriate. So when does a breastfeeding photo cross the line?
"On some occasions, breastfeeding photos contain nudity -- for example an exposed breast that is not being used for feeding -- and therefore violate our terms," Facebook said in a statement released to KHOU (you can read the full statement on their site). "Then such photos are reported to us and are found to violate our policies, the person who posted the photo is contacted, and the photos are removed."
Should breastfeeding moms be exempt from the nudity rules? Or do you think it's a private act that should be kept offline?
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