update Photo sharing site Photobucket has quickly u-turned on a decision to ban pictures that show babies in nappies. The company originally removed such images from its site because they depicted "nudity", which it said threatened the safety and security of its users.
Banned from Photobucket. This photo of a happy, nappy-wearing baby was one of hundreds of such images deleted from Photobucket because they depict nudity. (Credit: Good Mama Diapers)
However, within hours of being contacted by CNET News.com, Monica M. Massad, the content moderation manager at Photobucket decided to republish the removed pictures.
"My team has reviewed the images that were tossed in your account and it was determined that the images that were removed from your account should not have been removed. We have the images available to restore and are currently in the process of restoring them. Please accept our sincere apologies for the error," said Massad in an e-mail.
"It is true that we reviewed our content moderation guidelines to make sure it was in line with Photobucket's terms of service and it made us more strict on child nudity, however, we were over-censoring in this case and are working to rectify that," she added.
The original ban started when US-based Good Mama Diapers sponsored a photo contest on Photobucket and posted hundreds of photo submissions on the site. On Wednesday, Jessica Thornton of Good Mama Diapers logged on to the site and noticed they were all gone.
Thornton e-mailed Photobucket customer support to find out what happened. She got a reply saying that the site recently changed its content moderation policies regarding images of children and that the photos violated the new policy, which prohibits content that contains nudity.
"While we understand that in a family album type of setting, these images are innocent, we must remove the content because of the nudity and believe that this restriction is in the best interest of childrens' safety .. This policy applies to all accounts, public or private. We ask that you keep these images on your personal computers and not host them on Photobucket.com," the Photobucket e-mail said.
Dan Berger, a spokesman at Photobucket parent Fox Interactive, issued this statement in response to questions about the situation: "Per its terms of service, Photobucket removes all pictures that include nudity, regardless of the subject's age, in order to ensure the safety and security of its users."
An unsatisfied Thornton, who lost the hundreds of photos and had spent hours posting the images on Photobucket, said: "It's just horrible being made to feel like you've done something shameful when we're in the cloth diapering business".
Tiger
14/03/2008 11:31 AM
Never looked at Photobucket. Never will now. How ridiculous is our society becoming
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Aussie
14/03/2008 05:42 PM
Never will look at it again? They went back on their error and solved it, if anything, it shows that they are willing to show they have made a mistake. Please read the article before posting
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Fibonacci
18/03/2008 09:15 AM
Aussie, Tiger is referring to the ridiculous deviation of what is normally deemed normal (a baby in a diaper) in comparison to what would be deemed child pornography. A baby in a diaper does not depict child porn. Tiger is entitled to their decision not to visit a site, and your decision to visit such a site is not contested. Leave it at that...
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Concerned citizen of the world
18/03/2008 03:33 PM
I think we all need to be sensitive to the future of our children. child porn is a nasty activity that doesn't limit itself to childeren over or under any age. If you can suggest to me what age you feel is OK for a child to only be photographed fully clothed and give some scientific reasoning for it I will take your side, till then I think Photobucket acted responsibly.
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Erich
28/03/2008 02:02 AM
Disagree with Concerned Toddlers in diapers and bare-bottomed babies are just cute... Always have been and always will be. I think it's pretty sad when companies like photobucket start reading evil into even the most wholesome and healthy things. Attitudes like this contribute to the reasons why women don't breastfeed and discourage healthy, normal body self-image.
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BRUCEIE
28/03/2008 04:39 AM
THE PHOTO OF LOOKS LIKE A BOY IS JUST SOME THING ELSE I LOVE THE LOOKN THE FACE IT IS JUST SOME THING ELSE REAL NICE PHOTO THAT SOME ONE TOOK
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