When Sharon Adams posted pictures of her breasts to Facebook, she wasn’t doing it to be lewd or disgusting. She was doing it to raise awareness of breast cancer.
The 45-year-old mother of four in England is battling the disease and had a mastectomy, so she posted pictures of her scars to her profile on the Web site.
However, Facebook immediately removed the photos, calling them “sexual and abusive.”
Nearly 900 people protested Facebook’s actions by joining an online group that asked for the photos to be reinstated.
“I put these pictures out on Facebook to put a message out to women – check your breasts regularly and do not ever be ashamed of a mastectomy,” Adams told the newspaper. “For Facebook to claim they were sexual and abusive was absurd. Facebook has online groups about sexual positions and some groups which are bordering on racist – but they ban this?”
Facebook later admitted it made a mistake in taking down Adams’ photos.
“Our user operations team reviews thousands of reported photos a day and may occasionally remove something that doesn’t violate our policies,” said a spokesman from Facebook. “This is what happened here. We apologize.”
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