When it comes to nudity, Facebook is little different than Victorian England

Facebook is making a distinct choice: rather than enable freedom of expression as the company often claims to do, it imposes cultural conservatism, eroding our freedom in the very spaces we perceive to be and treat as our commons

When Fri(C)di(C)ric Durand-Baissas shared Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World on Facebook, he probably didn't expect that the painting - a close-up view of a nude woman's genitals and abdomen - would trigger the platform's censors. The French art enthusiast's profile was removed by Facebook in 2011, reportedly after another user flagged his post for breaching the company's guidelines on nudity.

Durand-Baissas, who is suing Facebook for a20,000 ($22,000) in damages, is unfortunately in good company. Over the years, countless others have found their content removed or their entire profiles deleted from social networking sites for posting nude or semi-nude images.