When it comes to the internet there's a whole seedy underworld of gross-out images. There are really sick, depraved things out there. And, when it comes to Facebook, it's impossible for the site's moderators to keep on top of all the millions of images that are uploaded to the site every day. So you'd think that when they suspended a woman's account for a photo she posted, it would be something really sick. But actually, it was just a photo of two women with rainbows painted on their faces, kissing each other.
Italian Carlotta Trevisan, 28, was told she had broken Facebook's 'nudity and pornography' rules after uploading the gay rights photo – which she had done to commemorate International Day Against Homophobia And Transphobia (IDAHOT) on Saturday.
Seeing the photo, 'friends' complained, one of them commenting that it was 'disgusting' and another saying that they 'have young children to protect.' Facebook asked Carlotta to remove the image, but the mother-of-one refused. She was then told her profile would be removed for 'violating the community's standards.'
'What was the harm with this photo, especially when so many like this can be found on Google? How can one photo provoke such sensitivity?' she told La Stampa, according to The Independent. 'There is nothing bad about a kiss. When I see people of the same gender kissing, I only see love, nothing else.'
She worried that, though she could fight back against this incident, the younger generation might not be able to handle it so well: 'I’m 28 years old and can fight back – but if that same photo had been posted by a 16-year-old girl how would she feel?'
Her Facebook page was later restored, and the 'offending' photo is now Carlotta's profile picture.
This incident comes as a Rainbow Europe survey looking at various European attitudes towards gay people found that Italy is one of the worst countries in the continent for LGBT rights, getting 25 per cent. Luckily for us, the UK leads the pack, with a whopping 82 per cent.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.