So Mr Zuckerberg, Just What Isn't Appropriate on Facebook

I get that it's 'Zuck's house and what Daddy says under his roof goes. Don't like it, go rent a room at Twitter. But since then it seems rules on belfies, topless blokes and creepy graphic posts of wounds have all been given the green light and my feed is fecking full of them. And it's bloody grim.

Up until quite recently I was what you might call a major social-slapper (all over Facebook like a rash on a babies butt) but have recently begun to feel like using crack might be a healthier pastime.

Given the publication of numerous clinical research including a study carried out by Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, which found that the social network can lead to depression (cheers, FOMO), it appears that I am not the only one finding Facebook more hell then haven.

I can't pinpoint the moment I started to feel like my daily (ahem, half-hourly) scroll had become unhealthy. It may be when I got sick to death of relentlessly emotional manipulation (like for this brave dead chicken, scroll if you are scum sucking death monger...you get my drift).

It could have been the endless stream of sheer attention-seeking drivel, dressed up as philanthropy in the form of activities like the ALS ice bucket challenge (here is an idea, get in the fucking bucket and stay there till you freeze morons. Much more amusing).

Or it could have been extreme irritation at the ridiculous double standards carried out by the techs in charge at billionaire towers.

Type 'women on Facebook banned for breastfeeding' into Google and you will find page after page of entirely natural images banned showing, despite the social giants allegedly softening their stance on breastfeeding posts in June last year.

It took pictures shared by 24-year-old Emma Bond in October last year to really force Facebook to publicly confirm it would allow breastfeeding shots. They showed her feeding her 12-week-premature baby Carene. That skin-to-skin contact that you see is vital to the wellbeing and development of all babies, but in particular premature babies.

Emma Bond with her newborn daughter Carene Photo: © Newsteam / SWNS Group

The anti-bodies in Emma's milk will in no small way have influenced Carene's prognosis. You are looking at a mother saving her tiny baby's life. I pity anyone looking at that image and seeing sex, the poor buggers must endure hard-ons when popping out for a pint.

Facebook banned it, then retracted it and confirmed that it was definitely, absolutely going to be much more sensible about the issue of breasts on its wall. Should it ever have taken such a massive viral campaign by Emma and her family to push change in a company priding itself on being so progressive and yet showing such Victorian virtue when faced with mamma's mammaries?

I get that it's 'Zuck's house and what Daddy says under his roof goes. Don't like it, go rent a room at Twitter. But since then it seems rules on belfies, topless blokes and creepy graphic posts of wounds have all been given the green light and my feed is fecking full of them. And it's bloody grim.

There is a reason I have my big-girl soap-box knickers in a bunch over the graphic content on Facebook. On a recent scroll of my timeline, someone had shared the picture of a dead foetus. Blood stained and tiny, it was close up, in detail and more than a little distressing.

That tragedy was someone's life and it can be argued that she has as much right to share her sadly natural experience as the mum breastfeeding her new-born. Two women, both mothers, just one with a better outcome.

Miscarriage carries too much stigma and needs to be discussed more openly. But when grief becomes so exposed that pictures of this nature are shared by a woman desperate to have her pain recognised by the clicks of millions, has the need for social recognition at the expense of the feelings and mental-wellbeing of others gone too far?

I asked Facebook to remove the post. Twice. Twice I got told no, because it doesn't breach their 'annoying or distasteful humour' standards. One must wonder if they even looked at it.

We as digital space-renters must take responsibility for what we share. But when it comes to the grief stricken, the angry or unwell; those with a potentially compromised sense of what is ok to say without causing harm to others, it must be the case that the landlord with a responsibility to the tenants it grants free pixel rooms to, steps in to prevent harm to the whole community.

So Mr Zuckerburg, where is the line? Saving the life of a living, breathing baby - nope, beg pixel renting bitches, beg and we might put it back. Graphically exposing naked vulnerability and grief over a lost baby for the titillation of voyeuristic strangers? All good - damned funny that.

Nope. Doesn't make sense to me either.

Close