Facebook has clarified its mastectomy photo policy after petitions from The Scar Project and Change.org/David Jay.
Facebook announced today that it will allow photos of mastectomy scars after a New York woman posted a petition that garnered 20,000 signatures on Change.org.
“We have long allowed mastectomy photos to be shared on Facebook, as well as educational and scientific photos of the human body and photos of women breastfeeding,” Facebook said in a prepared statement. “We only review or remove photos after they have been reported to us by people who see the images in their News Feeds or otherwise discover them. On occasion, we may remove a photo showing mastectomy scarring either by mistake, as our teams review millions of pieces of content daily, or because a photo has violated our terms for other reasons. As a reminder, our terms stipulate that we generally do not allow nudity, with some exceptions as laid out above and here, consistent with other platforms that have many young users.”
Facebook’s new written policy was hailed by cancer survivors who were outraged that women were not able to share their photos to support others with the disease.
The new policy was established after Facebook had conversations with Scorchy Barrington, a woman struggling with stage IV breast cancer, and photographer David Jay, founder of the SCAR Project.
h/t – abcnews
