A 54-year-old man has told how he was banned from Facebook after posting that he ‘liked faggots’, in reference to the British meatball of the same name.
Robert Wilkes had his account suspended for 12 hours after the remark, in which he reminisced about his favourite childhood dish.
Faggots are a traditional UK foodstuff made from meat off-cuts and offal. However the word is also a homophobic slang term for gays in the United States.
Faggots are a traditional British dish made from meat off-cuts and offal
Wilkes, of Somerset, told The Sun: “Facebook allows beheading videos, cruelty to animals, stabbing and terrible swear words – but not this. It’s political correctness gone mad.”
He added: “It may have a different meaning in America, but I used it in a food context.”
A Facebook spokesman told the paper the comment had been misinterpreted.
Meanwhile a spokesman for faggot-producer Mr Brain's tells HuffPost UK: "Hopefully Facebook has now solved the issue so that fans of Mr Brain’s Faggots can once again comment freely without being inhibited."
Words becoming lost in translation is turning into a recurrent problem for the social networking giant.
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In September an advert for Christmas Island’s Nature Week was pulled for inviting eco-tourists to view its native boobies.
The crackdown on the fluffy chicks occurred after the word was identifed as violating Facebook’s advertising guidelines and triggered an automatic ban.
While, as Wilkes points out, while the ban on footage and images of beheadings was recently lifted, breasts remain very much a touchy subject for Facebook.
Last year it apologised and reinstated a picture it had banned, after moderators apparently confused a woman's elbows with her nipples.
Breastfeeding mothers and cancer survivors displaying their mastectomy scars often find themselves at the receiving end of bans, with Facebook citing nudity violations.