Social media companies can have a hard time deciding what to censor. For Pinterest, it’s pro-life groups. For YouTube, it’s trolls. For Twitter, it’s dissenters. For Facebook? It’s a Led Zeppelin album cover.
After the website Ultimate Classic Rock uploaded a photo of the rock band’s 1973 album “Houses of the Holy” to Facebook, the social network flagged it as violating its guidelines.
“Since children as young as 13 years old use Instagram/Facebook and the app is available in third-party app stores, there are rules regarding nudity and solicitation that we have to follow,” Facebook’s Jessica Oda said in a statement to UCR. “We place limitations on the display of this content to limit exposure of sensitive content.”
The cover art in question shows nude children climbing the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. It’s a stylized image, featuring siblings Stefan and Samantha Gates. Stefan, years later, said he was disturbed by the cover, according to CNN.
But the album came out nearly 50 years ago. UCR reports that it has paired the cover image from Led Zeppelin’s Grammy-nominated album with more than 30 stories over the years, and Facebook has not, until now, intervened.
According to Oda’s statement to UCR, the post was “flagged by other members of the community. As a result, the content will likely be removed in the next couple hours for policy reasons.” UCR took it down first.
.@LedZeppelin fans, rejoice! Our exclusive report: https://t.co/fc89PSUBkt
— UltimateClassicRock (@UltClassicRock) June 21, 2019
Yahoo! Entertainment reports that the album art was also flagged and taken down elsewhere. Apparently, someone really doesn’t like Led Zeppelin.
But on Thursday, Facebook reversed its ban.
“As our community standards explain, we don’t allow nude images of children on Facebook,” a spokesman for Facebook told UCR. “But we know this a culturally significant image. Therefore, we’re restoring the posts we removed.”
On the one hand, especially in light of recent reports that videos of underage children on YouTube were accidentally curated for pedophiles, the complaint makes sense. On the other hand, the album is, as Facebook notes, “culturally significant.” And in and of itself, the art is not sexual. It’s reportedly based on Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novel Childhood’s End. As far as I know, Facebook doesn’t ban images of cherubs.
The company, which also banned and un-banned Nirvana’s much more explicit album art for “Nevermind,” should probably focus less on album covers and more on intentionally explicit content. Facebook wades into muddied waters as it chooses what to censor, and it’s commendable that it tried to protect children. But Led Zeppelin’s 46-year-old stylized album cover is probably not a threat.
