Facebook and Instagram have cracked down on the brinjal and peach emojis, mostly because they’re hardly ever used to talk about actual peaches and brinjals. Under their new community standards, Facebook and Instagram are reported to have banned the ‘sexual’ use of the two emojis on their platforms.
According to adult industry business website Xbiz, your Facebook and Instagram profile could get flagged or removed for ‘sexual solicitation’ if those emojis are used along with any statements about people’s sex lives, nude pictures with digital alterations or those that are partly covered with other emojis, and any mention of porn or adult material.
“We also restrict sexually explicit language that may lead to solicitation because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content and it may impede the ability for people to connect with their friends and the broader community,” Facebook states on its Community Standards page. On that page, under the header ‘Sexual Solicitation,’ ‘Criteria 2’ talks about ‘Suggestive elements’ that are not allowed to be posted. Under this, the first point is “Content makes the aforementioned offer or ask using one of the following sexually suggestive elements: Contextually specific and commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings.”
Xbiz mentions that these emojis include all ‘commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings,’ like the brinjal, the peach, the drops of liquid, etc.
The report also added that these changes were brought in quietly into Facebook Community Standards, sometime between September 7, 2019 and now.
According to Xbiz, Facebook and Instagram are targeting sex workers with updated community standards. The new language was brought to the attention of XBIZ by BBC journalist Thomas Fabbri, who covers sex worker issues.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: "We often make updates to our Community Standards. We publish these changes on our Community Standards site so our community is aware. With this update, nothing changed in terms of the policy itself or how we enforce it, we simply updated the language to make it clearer for our community."
Adult actress Kendra James told XBIZ, she was once banned from Instagram on the grounds of solicitation.
(With IANS inputs)