Massow rages at draconian Facebook

 
12 February 2013

Facebook’s zealous banning of nude images is “worse than the censorship in the middle of the Dark Ages”, according to the ICA’s former chairman Ivan Massow. The Londoner learns the entrepreneur and political activist has been repeatedly blocked from using his Facebook account after posting nude or semi-nude paintings by the up-and-coming artists he champions.

“They tried to ban me for three days this week for uploading a portrait of my partner by Andrew Salgado,” he tells me. “There’s nothing sexual or pornographic about it. You can’t even see the ‘naughty bits’. This kind of censorship really worries me. Americans are so puritanical and simplistic about this sort of thing.”

Fellow Facebook users, who have been banned after posting everything from naked baby photos to classic works of art, have been similarly outraged by the nudity rules. “People are up in arms,” says Massow. “They’re asking how works such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel could have been produced under such absurd restrictions. Facebook is trying to position itself in our lives as our main cultural meeting place online, but taking on that role is a huge responsibility and there’s currently a gaping hole in its policy.”

London-based artist Salgado has just been commissioned to paint four giant male figures for the windows of Harvey Nichols. Luckily for any visiting puritanical Americans, the paintings are unlikely to be nudes.

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