Facebook has come under fire for allegedly censoring an image of Santa Claus kneeling at the feet of baby Jesus, issuing the stern warning that the picture “may show violent or graphic content.”
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Though users are invited to uncover the picture, clearly it is a very bizarre choice to obscure such an image for those reasons.
According to Facebook’s content guidelines, images that may not appear to be violent or graphic images to some may still trigger a response in others.
“For that reason, we add a warning label to especially graphic or violent content so that it is not available to people under the age of eighteen and so that people are aware of the graphic or violent nature before they click to see it,” Facebook notes in its policy documents.
“We err on the side of allowing content, even when some find it objectionable,” Facebook explains on its community standards page.
After LifeSite News reported on the baffling occurrence, the story went viral, and Facebook changed its mind on the image in question.
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“Facebook is no longer censoring the image of Santa Claus kneeling before the Baby Jesus after LifeSiteNews’ report on the matter went viral,” LifeSite noted in a disclaimer posted to the top of the original story.
The story has been so widely shared that left-leaning fact-checking watchdog Snopes.com even took a look at it, admitting that Facebook “briefly overlaid a religious image with a warning screen about ‘violent or graphic content.'”
Facebook reportedly confirmed to Snopes that the “automated systems” used to root out inappropriate content had “mistakenly applied a warning screen to this image.”
The warning screen “was removed as soon as we identified the mistake,” noted the social media giant.