New Site Lets You Report Facebook and Other Networks When They Censor Art
Artists and art viewers alike have been frustrated recently over the censorship of nudity in depictions of works of art across media platforms. Stephen Colbert shed some light on the specific censorship regulations in one episode of The Late Show; now a new website allows online users to privately report instances of censorship online so that the data can be studied and regulations can be updated.
Nudity in art has been around for thousands of years, but Facebook still can’t take it. The social media site has deleted pics of artworks by people like Kate Durbin and Erika Ordosgoitto. It has blocked users like Frédéric Durand-Baïssas for sharing paintings including Gustave Courbet’s “L’Origine du Monde.” And though some people have protested by creating Facebook groups like Artists Against Art Censorship, recording every instance of censorship — let alone fighting back — is next to impossible.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) hopes to change that with a new site called Online Censorship. Created with Visualizing Impact, the website invites people to privately report instances of censorship not just on Facebook, but also on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, and Google+. EFF then studies the data to understand what gets censored, why, and how it affects people around the world. It’s all in the hopes of encouraging companies to tread more lightly in making decisions that impact free speech.
“The data we collect will allow us to raise public awareness about the ways these companies are regulating speech,” EFF Director for International Freedom of Expression Jillian York said in a statement. “We hope that companies will respond to the data by improving their regulations and reporting mechanisms and processes — we need to hold Internet companies accountable for the ways in which they exercise power over people’s digital lives.”— Laura C. Mallonee, Dec. 11
Read the full article at the Hyperallergic website.