Facebook has recently come under fire for deleting photos of breast cancer survivors showing their mastectomy scars, the Daily Mail reports. Images from "The SCAR Project" have been banned by the social networking site for containing "explicit content." The project's founder, photographer David Jay, was also kicked off the site for 30 days for uploading the images. According to the Daily Mail, Jay said he uploaded the pictures after Angelina Jolie's announcement that she had a preventive double mastectomy. Not long after he put the pictures on the site, they were taken down.
"I can't imagine anyone finding anything pornographic or sexualized or even offensive in any way," Jay told NBC News about the pictures.
The graphic photos show various women and men who have had their breasts removed leaving them with very visible scars. The project has been encouraging women to share their photos in an attempt to remove the stigma around breast cancer. The project hopes to raise awareness about the disease by "proudly displaying the scars from having the invasive surgery on their breasts." The majority of the images are currently on display in different galleries around the world.
Jay told the New York Daily News that each photo he puts up helps women deal with having the disease.
"Women find it very, very supportive to go and look at these pictures," he told the newspaper. "Each photo gets thousands of beautiful comments to the subjects themselves. When they remove these photos, the comments go with them."
Scorchy Barrington, 53, started a petition on change.org after reading a tweet about Jay's photos being banned from Facebook. The petition, which has close to 9,000 supporters, asks Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg to change their policy so the photos won't be put in the same category as pornography.
Barrington who is battling stage IV breast cancer, wrote in the petition that the photos "help me feel a little less alone in what I'm going through. By removing the photos, Facebook is sending us a message that our struggle with the disease should be kept in the dark."
Facebook did release a statement to Jay and Barrington apologizing for removing the photos and promising not to take down the photos again.
Alison Schumer, a spokeswoman for Facebook, told NBC News that the site has "long allowed mastectomy photos to be shared on Facebook, as well as educational and scientific photos of the human body and photos of women breastfeeding."
She added that they only review photos after they have been reported.
"On occasion, we may remove a photo showing a mastectomy scarring either by mistake, as our team review millions of pieces of content daily, or because a photo has violated our terms for other reasons," she said.
Schumer did not specify whether Jay's photos were removed because of a complaint or if it was an accident.
