Breast Practices
Facebook retains all rights to user-uploaded content for as long as the user's account exists, and it polices personal photo albums for anything it considers obscene. When it comes to female nudity, the difference between tasteful and lewd seems to hinge on the presence of a nipple. The difference is sometimes circumspect; Facebook tacitly approves of scantily clad women with suggestive cleavage but removes pictures of breast-feeding mothers. The Facebook nipple war escalated in May 2009, when the site removed a photo of a 45-year-old British woman's post-mastectomy chest. Sharon Adams had posted the photo to raise awareness of breast cancer and, she explained, to tell women, "Do not ever be ashamed of a mastectomy." Public scorn and user protests led the company to acquiesce; the photos went back up, and Facebook apologized.