And now Facebook has admitted it was being ridiculous.

On Friday, following widespread criticisms from news organizations and media experts across the globe, Facebook reversed its decision, saying in a statement to the Guardian: “After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. 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. In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.”

The statement continued: “Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value

Facebook v Norway, part 2.

Facebook has deleted a post by the Norwegian prime minister in an escalating row over the website’s decision to remove content featuring the Pulitzer-prize winning “napalm girl” photograph from the Vietnam war.

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or swear or question one’s grip on reality.

Erna Solberg, the Conservative prime minister, called on Facebook to “review its editing policy” after it deleted her post voicing support for a Norwegian newspaper that had fallen foul of the social media giant’s guidelines.

Solberg was one of a string of Norwegian politicians who shared the iconic image after Facebook deleted a post from Tom Egeland, a writer who had included the Nick Ut picture as one

Oh, Zuckerberg.

The Guardian headline: Mark Zuckerberg accused of abusing power after Facebook deletes ‘napalm girl’ post

Yes that sounds like Facebook. Remember the time there was that group posting photos of an allegedly gay man being burned alive, and Facebook kept telling us (and many others) it didn’t violate Facebook’s community standards? But it’s well known that photos of women nursing infants do violate those standards.

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco reports:

Norway’s largest newspaper has published a front-page open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lambasting the company’s decision to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnam war and calling on Zuckerberg to recognize and live up to his role as “the world’s most powerful editor”.

Espen

Siri Hustvedt on the subtle (I don’t think it’s all that subtle myself) misogyny of Matt Lauer’s performance in those back to back “interviews” with Clinton and Trump.

I am interested in the far more subtle variation of the misogyny illness, the one that lurks behind phrases such as “even-handed” and “fair-minded,” that low-grade fever that caused Matt Lauer to continually interrupt Hillary Clinton’s sharp, specific answers to his questions in the Commander in Chief Forum on NBC (thank god Clinton stood up and ignored him), and which also prompted him to allow Donald Trump to ramble on in incoherent sentence fragments about secret plans for defeating ISIS in thirty days, as if such nonsense were serious political discourse. Would

Via a friend on Facebook –

… Read the rest

Samantha Rea says there was the Twitter lark about #IfMenHadPeriods and then there was the inevitable ridiculous reaction to same.

It was a bit of fun, but not everyone thought so. One Twitter user wrote, “While this highly cisnormative hashtag is trending, I want to remind everyone that trans men do exist + some have periods.” Another complained, “Men do have periods. Not every man is cis and it’s disgusting for people to still be assuming that they are.” There were numerous other tweets along these lines.

I’m sorry, Social Justice Warriors, but here’s the science bit: Men don’t have periods – women do. That’s biology. It doesn’t matter how we identify, what we wear, who we sleep with, or

Child abuse in Toronto:

When music class begins this week at Toronto’s Donwood Park elementary school, Mohammad Nouman Dasu will send a family member to collect his three young children. They will go home for an hour rather than sing and play instruments – a mandatory part of the Ontario curriculum he believes violates his Muslim faith.

The school tried to accommodate the religious fanatic, but nothing would do – music has to be banned from his children’s lives entirely.

According to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail, some parents insist they cannot allow their children to be in the same room where musical instruments are being played. Mr. Dasu, a Koran teacher who sometimes leads prayers at

Yesterday evening in Dublin about 200 people showed up to protest outside that “clinic” that tells women lies about abortion.

In a report for The Times (Ireland edition), reporters Ellen Coyne and Catherine Sanz secretly recorded a consultation in the clinic between a staff member and a woman seeking advice on a crisis pregnancy.

It is alleged a staff member at the Women’s Centre, on Berkeley Street in Dublin 7, advised the woman that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer and that women who have had abortions are “known to neglect their children”.

It’s alleged and it’s on video that we can all look at.

Protesters – some carrying placards, others wearing high-vis clothing – began to gather

University students in South Africa are protesting student fees. Last night a historic college law library was torched.

Fabian Lemuel Pillay

The Independent reports:

South African politicians have united to condemn the burning of one of the country’s finest law libraries during protests over university fees, in which students say a female classmate has been raped.

The book burning was likened to the activities of the youth wing of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany in a statement by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Dasen Thathiah

A law lecturer at UKZN, Franaaz Khan, told TMG Digital that while fire fighters had managed to bring the fire under control‚ the faculty had lost priceless material, including rare books dating