Facebook bans famous war photo because the screaming, napalmed child's genitals are offensive

It’s also an incredibly graphic image as to the horrors of war. I would suggest reading up on what she has to say about it, her long friendship with the photographer, and how she has used this image to create the Kim Phúc Foundation which assists children in war town areas. You should try to understand why this image is OK, and why what you see as shielding a child is less helpful to what she herself doesn’t want to censor.

It is iconic because it is horrifying and that horror should make us all reconsider any military action.

Welcome to Boing Boing.

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This particular photo did indeed help change Americans’ attitude toward the war in Vietnam, which only ended because popular support for it evaporated.

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And yet, without such images we tend towards apathy. Genocides are crimes that people love to look away from, for instance. I think letting the White House hide behind the phrase “acts of genocide” would have been eminently easier without the footage of people being macheted in Rwanda. Now more than ever, we’re seeing small ethnic conflicts that are getting drowned out by our more privileged concerns.

I don’t see how we increase the status of other people’s humanity in our eyes by ignoring their suffering, or being too weak to watch it. Especially in the case of ostensible democracies where we should be forced to see the horrors we create, like ISIS, or the less savory products of our bombings.

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You might, but maybe that this is accurate put you there.:slightly_frowning_face:

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To go back to the original story, being aware of participating on Facebook makes every time you post feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. (source)


Aaaaand, this is a pretty serious thread. “Suffering” through facebook is not even remotely comparable to being napalmed. #firstworldwhiteguyproblems

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Well, sure… but like, at least 5 years after support evaporated and with an incredibly violent detour through Laos in the process (which was Nixon’s secret plan - Vietnamization, but only after some major escalation).

We got out of Vietnam, because it was clear we were losing, not because popular opinion turned against it, I’d argue.

These sorts of violent images of the war were around for several years, and well before we stopped sending new troops and finally pulled out altogether.

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I’m very sure just last week we all decided to end FacefuckingBook, forever.

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American cultural reasons, that is. Here’s another iconic image from the same era that presumably doesn’t offend American cultural mores because no one is naked.

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I understand this point, and I agree to a large extent… but where is the line here? Especially, when @Katie_Kim points out, it’s almost always POC we see. Many people talked about how images of the suffering of refugees have opened their eyes, but it’s not like it’s done that for everyone. And especially with events in the past, there is a real danger of commodifying that violence in a way that does no real service to those suffering now. It’s not like the Islamophobia that’s seeing a spike thanks to Trump has evaporated due to the picture of that young Syrian boy from a couple of years ago. The films about the Rwandan genocide have done nothing to raise awareness of the situation in places like South Sudan.

So, how do we balance understanding and empathizing with not being exploitative?

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In this case, by listening to her and her wishes. I feel like we should let her speak, for those interested.

And if you have a couple extra bucks, there are worse places to send it:

You can also find the Foundation on… Facebook: Redirecting...

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Not unrelated. One of the reasons it became clear we couldn’t win was that Americans gradually realized that the locals didn’t want us there. Nixon would have been happy to keep the war going for years more if he’d had the support and resources to do so.

Imagine how much faster the American populace would have turned against the invasion of Iraq if one of the early defining images of the invasion had been disturbing stuff like this:

Instead of feel-good stuff like this:

[Edited to add contrasting examples]

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It’s usually POC who get the brunt of the violence committed by our government.

That’s one of the problems.

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Again, the nudity is the issue, but that is because it falls under the broad category. The ONLY reason we are defending it is because it has important historical significance. If it was just some young child naked, no one would be defending that it should be allowed to stay.

No entity as big as FB can police a billion or hundreds of millions of images and be able to make contextual decisions.

There have been complaints that some women showing her boobs is banned, but terrorists executing people is not. So sure, there is some double standard. But it isn’t like Boobs aren’t readily available elsewhere, and it isn’t exactly news worthy.

And again - there are ways to display and link to said historic images and keep within their guidelines (see above). FB is for keeping up with friends and family, inane memes, drama, ads we don’t want, and videos of cute animals. Is that really the battle ground for pushing the issue to publish a 40+ year old photo most people are already aware of?

I used to moderate a 15K member forum and that alone was exhausting. The limits are there for good reason, but with any rules, there will be cases where exceptions should maybe be made, but you can’t always do so due to the time and manpower that takes.

Fun fact - they also made a policy to delete any groups for BST fire arms. While I think that is total BS, it is their site, they pay the servers, I am entitled to nothing. So I live within their rules and use something else.

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As others are pointing out here, American cultural mores are not offended by certain types of nude photos, IF the people they depict are not white.

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I have no answer. But I don’t see publicizing such photos as necessarily exploiting the subjects, and I reject any suggestion that I’m some popcorn-munching “consumer” of these images. They horrify me, but I don’t want anyone deciding that I shouldn’t worry my pretty head about them. And if many of the images are of POC, maybe it’s because they are the ones suffering disproportionately in our name.

The picture of Kim Phuc was published at a time when images of nudity were rare in mainstream news, but the importance of the story overrode editorial policy. It would be nice if Facebook had the same sort of courage.

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They can do what they want and people can complain. They can put in place a “No cargo shorts” policy and take down any picture of anyone wearing cargo shorts. Have at it. I’m close to dropping my account altogether, mostly because I want to defriend half my friends but I don’t want to offend anyone. Hiding them just leads to me looking stupid when I see them and don’t know they got divorced or whatever.

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As someone who’s spent probably far too much time hanging out with ancaps, it’s not that they don’t think monopolies are unreasonable, it’s that they believe monopolies are only made possible by market intervention, and thus can not exist in a truly free market.

Why am I not surprised that that sounds like music to the ears of liberal white folks?

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I purposely avoid such material, but I’m told that such images are a huge part of the daily internet traffic.

Because you’re wallowing in cynicism to show your superiority over us?

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