Facebook rejected an advert from a dad trying to help get his baby son a heart transplant because a photo of the sick infant was judged too graphic.
Seven-week-old Hudson Bond was diagnose with cardiomyopathy, a serious form of heart disease, shortly after his birth on 18 July. Since then, he has been kept alive in his hospital cot by an artificial heart, but he will need a transplant in order to go home and live a normal life.
With his son now desperately in need of a donor heart, Hudson's dad, Kevin Bond, decided to start a Facebook page called Hudson's Heart to raise awareness of infant organ donation.
To increase the visibility of his page to Facebook's billion-strong membership Bond paid $20 for a 'boost', whereby an advert for the page will appear alongside a user's news feed.
The picture he chose to accompany the ad shows his baby son asleep, covered by a blanket, hooked up to the hospital apparatus that is keeping him alive.
Bond was shocked when the ad was rejected on the grounds that the innocent photo of a sick baby breached Facebook's guidelines.
The explanation accompanying the notice of the supposed guideline breach was even more baffling, comparing the innocuous photo of Hudson to a picture of zombies or dismembered bodies:
"Your ad wasn't approved because the image or video thumbnail is scary, gory, or sensational and evokes a negative response. Images including accidents, car crashes, dead and dismembered bodies, ghosts, zombies, ghouls, and vampires are not allowed."
"I was really hurt actually," Bond told WTVD. "I mean I kind of cried... To have someone reject a picture... [of] my beautiful son lying in a hospital bed needing help - that really cut me."
Bond says his attempts to contact Facebook in the hopes of getting an explanation for the bizarre rejection have been met with silence.
"We love our son, we just want to share his story and raise awareness for kids like him and to see that request denied is hard," he said.
Facebook has yet to comment on the incident.
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