Olia Hercules, who shared an image of a pig’s ear and trotters on Instagram praising their quality and asking why the once popular cuts had fallen out of favour, found the photo sharing app censored the image the following day with the line “Sensitive content. This photo contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing.”
A post shared by Olia Hercules (@oliahercules) on Mar 5, 2019 at 8:38am PST
Hercules replied on Twitter claiming that people are “detached from reality”.
“My photo of @pipersfarm pig’s ears and trotters was censored by @instagram I guess someone complained,” she wrote.
“Why the monkey don’t they report pictures of burgers, sausages and bacon too?
“Ridiculous. And shame on you @instagram for censoring it. People are so detached from reality.”
My photo of @pipersfarm pig’s ears and trotters was censored by @instagram I guess someone complained. Why the monkey don’t they report pictures of burgers, sausages and bacon too? Ridiculous. And shame on you @instagram for censoring it. People are so detached from reality. pic.twitter.com/7UYeUexAZ4
— Olia Hercules (@OliasGastronomy) March 6, 2019
The chef received a wave of support online with many left scratching their heads as to why the app deemed the photo offensive.
Can there really be people so removed from the reality of what we eat that an image of meat cuts that resemble the animal from which they come can cause offence? What do you think.
It's not the first time the Facebook-owned app's censorship policy has been questioned. By and large, censorship depends on some one reporting an image as offensive however, there is algorythmical censorship at play and despite what we are led to believe, AI is a long way off being able to understand the subtleties of what should be acceptable or not.
