Facebook Just Updated Their ‘Community Standards’ And You Can Say Goodbye To Bare Butts And Drug Dealers

As they do every so often, Facebook has updated their TOS and this time they’ve rolled out a new section titled ‘Community Standards’. They also dropped a blog post explaining just what it is they’re changing.

Facebook has never had a reputation for being risqué, or pushing the envelope when it comes to racy content, but in this latest iteration of their ‘Community Standards’ they seem to have sucked the fun out of Facebook in a way that we never expected before.

The billionaires at Facebook want you to believe that they’ve updated their ‘Community Standards’ for four main reasons:

  • Helping to keep you safe
  • Encouraging respectful behavior
  • Keeping your account and personal information secure
  • Protecting your intellectual property

Which seems reasonable. We all want our information to remain secure. But how far exactly are they reaching when it comes to the new changes? Well, as it turns out you’re no longer allowed to shoot the moon. Only some nipple photos are restricted, but all bare ass photos are now completely against Facebook’s ‘Community Standards’.

Here’s what Facebook has to say regarding nudity on the site:

“People sometimes share content containing nudity for reasons like awareness campaigns or artistic projects. We restrict the display of nudity because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content – particularly because of their cultural background or age. In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content. As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. We are always working to get better at evaluating this content and enforcing our standards.

We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks. We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures. Restrictions on the display of both nudity and sexual activity also apply to digitally created content unless the content is posted for educational, humorous, or satirical purposes. Explicit images of sexual intercourse are prohibited. Descriptions of sexual acts that go into vivid detail may also be removed.”

Soooo adios any Facebook pages that are 18+? Is that a safe assumption?

On top of that they’ve just put every drug dealer out of business who uses Facebook to make a living, but we’ll get to that more in a second.

Part of the big reason of Facebook’s ‘Community Standards’ update was due to them beginning to restrict content that may be deemed offensive in certain countries if the government of that country deems it to be offensive. As they did in Turkey by taking down Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Facebook will comply with governments if they find certain content to be hateful or offensive. Though they claim they may leave the content visible to people in other countries and it will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Back to the handling of ‘illegal activity’ and drug dealers on Facebook. It’s not clear yet how Facebook will handle legalized marijuana dispensaries throughout the nation, as they are legal within the states but are still illegal on the federal level. These dispensaries using their Facebook pages to promote products such as edibles and strains of cannabis are in violation of federal law, and it’s unclear where Facebook will stand on the legalization debate.

On the one hand you’d assume that since they’re based out of California, socially liberaly, and a company of relatively young people, they’d be all for the ending of marijuana prohibition and nationwide legalization of marijuana. But on the other hand they have a prove track record of siding with the laws of the nation, and not dealing with state’s law. So whether or not the dispensaries of Colorado, Washington, and Alaska will be able to continue to operate their Facebook pages remains to be seen, as I think there will be thousands of antsy DEA agents looking to stave off the legalization waves that are ending marijuana prohibition, and keeping these agents paid handsomely due to the War on Drugs.

For more on Facebook’s updated ‘Community Standards‘ click on through!