
Facebook Won’t Remove This Woman’s Butthole as a Business Page - pulisse
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/facebook-butthole-business
======
minimaxir
HN discussion of the original Reddit post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22170749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22170749)

Note that _hours_ after this article was posted yesterday, Facebook reversed
course and removed the page.

~~~
klyrs
This is a story about a broken review process. It's great that they reversed
course after her butthole got international attention, but it would be even
better if facebook made the right call the first time.

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bsg75
> Facebook has said it isn’t in violation of its community standards (Facebook
> removed the Page after this article was published)

I can't image a more eloquent example describing Facebook's standards.

~~~
bilekas
Or double standards since it's been taken down..

Maybe bad publicity is in their community standards too.

God I hate Facebook.

~~~
CarelessExpert
Reply All just released a Q&A episode that included a story about a woman who
tried and failed to regain access to her Facebook profile after a mistake
related to the Facebook real name policy.

The upshot was exactly this: Unless something rises to the level of creating
bad publicity, trying to get help from Facebook for issues like this is
basically screaming into the wind.

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mikece
"Update: Facebook has removed the Page for Jespersen's butthole."

Goes to show that Facebook could have moved that fast all along but can't be
bothered to respond until it's a news item. I hope Samantha sues for $50MM or
more and wins because a precedent needs to be established.

~~~
cjhopman
Or that the people at Facebook that can move that fast on something like this
had no idea about this case. I suspect that most reviews, just like any other
even medium-sized company's support, are going through people that don't have
quite the same capabilities.

~~~
WalterSear
You are saying the same thing.

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primordialsoup
This is unfortunate that she had to escalate it in this manner for the page to
be gone. Now a search for her name will point to these articles.

~~~
acwan93
Good ol’ Streisand effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

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minimaxir
Re: the use of her real name in the article:

> I talked to her about this exact thing and offered to use her first name
> only. She wanted to use her full name and was aware it would show up in
> google.

[https://twitter.com/katienotopoulos/status/12229199529040936...](https://twitter.com/katienotopoulos/status/1222919952904093696)

------
RileyJames
How do the community standards defend this page / business?

I mean, it’s clearly not useful, valuable, or active. It has no reviews, it’s
clearly not a real business that sells anything.

How did it pass the “seems legit” sniff test? Even if it didn’t break a
specific rule, how does it MEET any community standards?

~~~
krapp
The community standard is that it doesn't break a specific rule - that _is_
the sniff test. Context-specific pun intended.

Facebook doesn't have the right to decide what pages are or are not
"legitimate", useful, viable or active apart from whether they violate its
terms of service - to do so would be exactly the sort of censorship and
violation of freedom of expression that people here are usually up in arms
about.

Today it's this girl's butthole. Tomorrow it might be a religion or a
political party that is arbitrarily determined to be "not legitimate" and
banned by the powers that be. And then what? It's the butt of fascism on our
heads forever.

~~~
lawlessone
>Facebook doesn't have the right to decide what pages are or are not
"legitimate", useful, viable or active apart from whether they violate its
terms of service - to do so would be exactly the sort of censorship and
violation of freedom of expression that people here are usually up in arms
about.

On Facebook , Facebook has that right.

------
tengbretson
Surely buzzfeed could have avoided publishing this person's real name.

~~~
pulisse
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22192847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22192847).

The subject _asked_ the reporter to include her full name.

------
ryanmercer
My first reaction was t look at the calendar and the date of the article to
make sure neither was April 1st.

I feel like Facebook just needs to create a list of no-go words and add to it
as problems arise. Words like common profanity, 'butthole', 'titty',
'titties', etc. This would be a good, common sense, first step.

I've had friends have art flagged and removed when it was non-sexual
anthropomorphic nudity (breasts) in their art but then "so and so's butthole"
requires news coverage for removal?

~~~
jerf
I was likewise surprised that such a title would pass HN's title standards and
figured I'd just gotten someone's early, crude editorialization but... nope,
that's the correct the title. That's the news.

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bilekas
In the US, do you guys have : 'the right to be forgotten' or something simular
that this could be cleaned up even a little bit from google.

This is a good example of when Facebook just doesn't apply common sense.

~~~
dijit
There is no direct corollary to that law in the US.

The New York State Assembly has come nearest to an American version of a
right-to-be-forgotten. The Bill, A05323, titled “An act to amend the civil
rights law and the civil practice law and rules, in relation to creating the
right to be forgotten act,” in large part mimics of the European Court of
Justice’s decision. But there doesn't seem to be anything outside of that.

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colejohnson66
The only things I’ve reported that have been taken down are clearly scam ads.
I’ve (also) reported hate speech comments and they always say it doesn’t
violate their standards.

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pwinnski
Next up: "Google won't remove results for a Buzzfeed article about how
Facebook wouldn't remove a business page about my butthole."

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izzydata
Now this article is the first result as well as a thumbnail of the images so
you can see her face. This doesn't seem like a good outcome.

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jdsully
Of course buzzfeed has to plaster her name over the article. Now the FB page
will be replaced by this one.

~~~
pulisse
As another comment pointed out[1], the BF reporter offered to anonymize the
victim, but she insisted that her full identity be included.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22192847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22192847).

~~~
jdsully
Thanks for the correction.

