Moms vs. Facebook. One of the latest obscenity battles is pictures of women breastfeeding on Facebook.
The lactivists have put up a strong front against Facebook, which removed numerous photos of women feeding their babies. The lactivists have created Facebook groups with almost 200,000 members (compared to the "Breastfeeding IS Obscene" group with 101 members), have had a nurse-in outside of Facebook headquarters in California and also had a virtual protest against the social networking site.
Facebook's Terms of Use states that users must not upload anything obscene and the company has the right to "delete or remove (without notice) any Site Content or User Content in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason ... that in the sole judgment of the Company violates this Agreement or the Facebook Code of Conduct, or which might be offensive, illegal, or that might violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of users or others."
Many in the Facebook community have taken sides. Some say: How can a picture of a woman breastfeeding be offensive when naked college boys squatting on toilets routinely pop up on our Newsfeed? Others say the obscenity rules should apply for both lactivists' nipples and barely-18 bombshells' nipples.
And although this controversy directly applies to few of us on campus. One artist has explored the implications it may have on larger society by creating a self-portrait composed of dozens of photos of his very own nipples -- which is now his Facebook profile picture.