Tonight I’m posting a straightforward photo-manipulation, no caricature this time. I did this manipulation to illustrate how I feel about Facebook’s censorship of images and censorship in general. I think this is a serious subject and I just wanted to express my feelings about unfair and thoughtless censorship all around us. It’s not just people doing the censoring, in fact that’s the problem, algorithmic censorship is controlling what we see or don’t see on the web, not people. I’ll let Eli explain the algorithm bit below. I can understand protecting young children from graphic images, but to mutilate a work of art, even a Master’s work is wrong. There must be another way. Take DeviantArt.com for instance. They actually have adult content on their site and to protect minors from such content, they have taken measures to mask and password block any nudity or violence so only responsible adults can see it, and it gives the viewer a choice with a warning of the content. Facebook deletes any image flagged by anyone and refuses to give a reason why it was deleted or even bother to notify you. It’s just wrong. Dali is going to turn over in his grave after seeing what I did to his painting of his dear wife, but it was for a cause and I think he would agree about the mindless censorship going on. I myself have had two Dali paintings deleted from my Facebook album among several other works. Just thought I would put my two cents in. Listen to what Eli has to say about it. Crazy stuff!

I’m no expert on algorithmic censorship but I do know this; you can’t program an algorithm to have common sense.