Facebook’s removal of Napalm Girl was a deliberate trained decision, not an error.

Evidence

Much of the press coverage treated Facebook’s decision to remove the image as a thoughtless one, even an automatic one. But Egeland’s post was almost certainly removed by a paid, human reviewer, though it may have been flagged by automatic software or by a user. Nor was it an error: in fact, Facebook had a specific policy on this specific image, which it had encountered before, many times. It was later reported by Reuters that the famous photo “had previously been used in training sessions as an example of a post that should be removed… . Trainers told content-monitoring staffers that the photo violated Facebook policy, despite its historical significance, because it depicted a naked child, in distress, photographed without her consent.” Ut’s photo is a test image, literally and figuratively, a proxy with which an industry and a society draws parameters of what is acceptable. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet, 18

Categorization

• QUESTION: A single image becomes a durable ‘test case’ around which a platform’s policy ossifies — worth tracing how specific infamous artifacts shape categorical rules.
• XREF: connects to: Platforms hide moderation by overwhelming users with what is available. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 31; Even the iconic war photo was originally censored for nudity. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 19; Seemingly hypocritical moderation decisions stem from slippage between labor layers. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 407