Facebook censors king cake babies for nudity. No kidding - NOLA.com

We couldn’t make this up. King Cake Snob is a website dedicated to rating New Orleans’ ring-shaped Mardi Gras pastry. On Monday (Jan. 7) the management of King Cake Snob published a Facebook post proclaiming the start of the king cake consumption season. To draw more attention to the website, King Cake Snob sought to popularize the social media post by offering to pay Facebook to elevate its online presence.

The Facebook post included the words “We’re Back, Baby” and a photo featuring glinting plastic king cake babies – the traditional charm found inside of most king cakes. That’s where the trouble began.

According to King Cake Snob spokeswoman Beth Harris, by Tuesday morning (Jan. 8) Facebook had sent an email rejecting the website’s request for a paid boost, because their social media post included “an image or video depicting excessive skin or nudity, which includes medical diagrams depicting external organs of reproduction, breasts or butt. This kind of material is sensitive in nature."

Harris said King Cake Snob reached out to Facebook to explain that the excessive skin was of the pink plastic variety and that their intentions were innocent, but they were rebuffed.

“If they don’t get Mardi Gras,” she said, “I don’t think we can explain it to them.”

The offending photo remains on the King Cake Snob Facebook page, but the page also displays a tongue-in-cheek protest photo that includes a black bar over the most objectionable area of a tiny plastic baby, plus the words “censored” and “banned by Facebook.”

King Cake Snob is published by the Innovative Advertising agency, but Harris promised the censored post wasn’t a deliberate publicity stunt.

“We were completely shocked,” Harris said. “We walked around the office saying ‘Nobody’s going to believe this.’”

Is the incident merely an absurdity produced by an oversensitive nudity screening algorithm. Or has someone finally stepped up to defend the modesty of poor little plastic pastry infants?

Doug MacCash has the best job in the world, covering art, music and culture in New Orleans. Contact him via email at dmaccash@nola.com. Follow him on Twitter at Doug MacCash and on Facebook at Douglas James MacCash. As always, please add your point of view to the comment stream.

Let's block ads! (Why?)