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Facebook, Instagram bans eggplant, peach as sexual emojis

Any obscene statement or picture or any adult content mentioned, referring to porn can lead to flagging off the account or page/ removal of account or page.

Facebook, Instagram bans eggplant, peach as sexual emojis

(Representational image: iStock)

Following the sexual usage of emojis like eggplant and peach on social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday banned the two emoji under their new community standards.

The new community standards refer to “(commonly used) sexual emojis or emoji strings” as criteria that qualify as “Suggestive Elements”.

As per the media reports, the two social media platforms that cater to millions of users across the globe, are trying to target sex workers by banning such sexually referred emojis or emoji strings.

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Apart from removing the emojis, any obscene statement or picture or any adult content mentioned, referring to porn can lead to flagging off the account or page/ removal of account or page.

“The new language, under the guise of preventing ‘sexual solicitation’, restricts even further the posts that sex workers are allowed to share, making them even more exposed to targeted harassment campaigns by anti-porn crusaders,” the report on adult industry news portal XBIZ, mentioned on Tuesday.

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.”

In the report, Adult film actress Kendra James was quoted saying her account was once banned from Instagram on the grounds of solicitation.

(With input from agencies)

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