The Facebook Controversy, not.

We seem to have stumbled into a full-blown controversy. I feel like I missed most of it but people appear to have been accusing Facebook of censoring the tattoo photo. Russ Bowen of KOMO News 4 contacted me about a censorship issue this morning and I told him that I had not posted the photo nor was I aware of its having been removed. He did some investigative reporting and called the tattoo shop in Ontario whose Facebook page has been supposedly affected. The shop owner said Facebook has not touched the photo and has assured him it has no intention of doing so. The photo has been shared over 148,000 times and some people have chosen to delete it which probably started the censorship rumors. Then UPI.com ran a news story without apparently verifying the facts and now Huffington and others are repeating the Facebook censorship story verbatim. So far, Russ at KOMO seems to be the only one to do some real reporting. (You rock, Russ!)

Scott adds: The good news is that Inga and Tina’s work is getting out to more people than ever and is hopefully giving hope to those who need it most. */:-)

My photo  on the Custom Tattoo Design’s Facebook page stats as of 5:38 pm 2/20/13:

Here are a few news sources that seem to be reporting directly off the newsfeed. Here is one headline:

“Facebook removes photo of breast cancer survivor’s chest tattoo, picture goes viral” Click to read the UPI article

Here is another:

“Facebook Removes Photo Of Breast Cancer Survivor’s Tattoo, Users Fight Back” Click to read the Huffington Post article