http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/technology/facebook-vietnam-war-photo-nudity.html 2016-09-12 14:07:29 Facebook Restores Iconic Vietnam War Photo It Censored for Nudity The social network was criticized for removing the image of a naked girl fleeing napalm, renewing questions about the company’s role in what can be published online. === The image is iconic: A naked, 9-year-old girl fleeing napalm bombs during the Vietnam War, tears streaming down her face. The picture from 1972, which went on But for The move triggered a backlash over how Facebook was censoring images. When a Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, cried foul over the takedown of the picture, thousands of people globally responded on Friday with an act of virtual civil disobedience by posting the image of Ms. Phuc on their Facebook pages and, in some cases, daring the company to act. Hours after the pushback, Facebook reinstated the photo across its site. “An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our community standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography,” Facebook said in a statement on Friday. “In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.” The reversal underscores Facebook’s increasingly tricky position as an arbiter of mass media. While the social network has resisted being labeled a media entity — its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, recently “Mark Zuckerberg can resist the definition all he wants, claiming Facebook is a white hot tech company, not a media company,” said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “But it is now possible for a company to be both.” In an “Mark Zuckerberg is the most powerful editor in chief in the world,” Mr. Hansen, whose newspaper has a print circulation of 200,000, said in an interview on Friday. “Tomorrow, there will be another photo. Facebook will have to respond to that.” Ms. Phuc did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nick Ut, the photographer who took the iconic image for The Associated Press, was traveling; the news agency said it was “proud of the photo.” “We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward,” a Facebook spokeswoman said. The frequency with which Facebook needs to respond to questions over its media role has increased over the past 18 months. In May, the company had to grapple with reports that some editors working on its “Trending Topics” section — a portion of the site in which Facebook displays some of the most-talked-about stories on the network — were Facebook last month Last year, Facebook also Facebook’s editorial influence reaches far beyond Trending Topics. The company, with 1.71 billion members worldwide, is continuously refining and updating the Many of the world’s largest publishers, from The New York Times and The Guardian to Vice and BuzzFeed, also increasingly rely on Facebook to communicate with the social network’s users. A growing number of media companies and analysts Almost half of American adults rely on Facebook as a source of news, The commotion over the photo of Ms. Phuc, also known as the Napalm Girl picture, began when Tom Egeland, a Norwegian author, wrote a Facebook post in August that included seven photographs about the history of warfare. One of those was the image of Ms. Phuc, which was then removed by Facebook, citing its standards policy. Facebook uses a combination of algorithms and human moderators to review photos that can potentially break its rules. In this case, the photo was tagged for removal by one of Facebook’s algorithms, which was then followed up by a human editor, according to a person at the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly. After Mr. Egeland criticized the removal of his post, he was barred from posting on Facebook for 24 hours. On Wednesday, after he republished the photo on his Facebook page, Mr. Egeland said Mr. Hansen of Aftenposten, taking a stand on behalf of Mr. Egeland, asked his journalists to report on the author’s case this week and also posted the Vietnam War photo on the newspaper’s own Facebook page. Mr. Hansen said he received an email on Wednesday from the social network requesting that the image be taken down. Before he could respond, he said Facebook removed the newspaper’s post without asking permission. On Friday, Yet soon after Ms. Solberg published that Facebook post, When the picture’s takedown went viral, the photo went into wide circulation on the social network, including on the Mr. Egeland, the Norwegian author whose Facebook post kicked off the global protest, said the company’s reversal underlined how people can come together to force a tech giant to change its ways — even though he could still not post on his own Facebook page until his three-day exile expired. “I hope that Facebook realized that this was a mistake,” he said in an interview. “I would love to go online right now and publish, ‘We won!’”