Facebook Appears to Have Banned Led Zeppelin’s ‘Houses of the Holy’ Cover
Despite Facebook’s community standards allowing “photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures,” it appears as though the cover of Led Zeppelin‘s 1973 album Houses of the Holy doesn’t fall under that guideline.
Classic Rock dove deep into this issue and shared stories of Facebook users who have used the image on event pages or Zeppelin fan pages only for the post to be deleted citing the image violated Facebook’s community standards. Some Facebook users were even locked out of their accounts for up to three days.
So, why is this happening? Because Facebook users upload hundreds of millions of photos every single day, the social media giant has hired moderators to approve or block images that are flagged via their algorithm for potentially showing “a certain percentage of skin.” Because of the appearance of naked children on the cover, it’s understandable why the Houses of the Holy artwork was flagged.
The problem with the moderator system, however, is that because they have to go through so many images every day, some of which are of a very disturbing nature, they often have a mere handful of seconds to determine whether or not an image violates their community standards. Depending on the location and/or the age of the moderator, there’s a possibility they’ve never heard of Led Zeppelin, much less have seen the House of the Holy album cover. This could be a big reason why the artwork has been banned.
Of course, this isn’t the first time album art has been banned by Facebook. Classic Rock also cites how in 2011 the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind was banned, but the ban was eventually lifted.
In other words: For the time being, don’t share the cover of Houses of the Holy, because it could result in getting locked out of Facebook.
Erica Banas is rock/classic rock news blogger that loves the smell of old vinyl in the morning.
