Facebook Bans Mom for Photo of Child Pretending to Breastfeed

Would you call this obscene? Mom Lauren Ferrari was banned from Facebook for seven days after posting a photo of her 5-year-old-daughter pretending to nurse her 2-year-old daughter, KOMO News reports.

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The mom from Seattle posted the photo with the caption, “She says she’s nursing her baby.” Within a day of Ferrari posting the photo, Facebook removed the image from the site because they said it was a violation of its community standards policy, although they were vague about the specific issue. Ferrari’s response: “What’s obscene about breastfeeding?”

Though Ferrari thought the photo was harmless, the Seattle Police Department thinks otherwise.  Stefanie Thomas, a victims advocate for the Seattle Police Department, says that the problem is there is no way to remove the photo once it has been spread across the internet. She says, “That's something that this family, that these girls, are going to have to ultimately deal with.”

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Ferrari is defending the photo against claims that the image borders on pornography. “They need to calm down and maybe focus on the actual pornography on their site,” she says.

Do you think Ferrari’s photo was appropriate for Facebook? Would you post a photo like that?