As part of this year’s campaign they released a series of beautiful ads featuring images of survivors without their t-shirts on that reveal their scars and mastectomies.
Despite getting early approval for the ads from Facebook the social media giant yesterday rejected the advertisements because they apparently breach the platform’s nudity policy.
This decision to block what have been described as important, hard-hitting and beautiful photographs raising awareness of an important health campaign has been widely derided.
“We certainly understand that the ads are promoting awareness for breast cancer, however the images associated with the ad are in violation of our policies for partial nudity,” a Facebook employee wrote in an email to the BCNA. “We will uphold the disable here until the ads can be modified for compliance.”
The fact Facebook allowed livestream footage of the Christchurch terror attack to be uploaded makes its stance on this very hard to fathom.
In a very bold campaign, and alongside our ‘breast friends’ @bakersdelight yesterday we launched our annual Pink Bun Campaign. Facebook has come under fire for rejecting the campaign ads featuring survivors without their t-shirts on, claiming they violated the nudity policy. https://t.co/ua7lf2Qmhf
— BCNA (@BCNAPinkLady) May 3, 2019
The campaign was specifically designed to draw attention to the disease that affects more than 19,000 people every year. The BCNA says that every person pictured on the posters is a breast cancer survivor who volunteered their time to be involved and share their story.
Facebook is allowing the images to be posted to the pages of both BCNA and Baker’s Delight but is not running the advertisements. BCNA’s Kirsten Pilatti said this is a significant impediment.
“The opening days of the campaign are where we raise the most money for BCNA to ensure we can provide free resources to those people with breast cancer,” she said. “Facebook is a very important tool for us to promote the campaign.”