A North Carolina artist who created a viral painting in 2009 of Santa Claus kneeling over the baby Jesus is claiming that, for the second time in two years, the painting was temporarily censored by Facebook.
Gaye Frances Willard said of the painting’s latest alleged censorship that Facebook has flagged as “violent content”.
As we get closer #Christmas, a #STEM The Network wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. May you have the gift of #faith, the blessing of #hope & a #Peace his #love at Christmas and always. (Artist: Gaye Frances Willard) #catholiced #catholicschoolla #Education pic.twitter.com/9jigrSJad6
– ADLA STEM Network Schools (@STEMschoolsLA) December 21, 2018
Willard told FOX8 earlier this month that she always wanted to be an artist, recalling: “I was about 3 years old and my mom said I used to draw on the wall. I would draw a small line and a circle. “She focused mainly on portraits during her career, saying she focused on the person’s eyes, adding,” I want it to have an emotional effect. “
She said of her 2009 painting: “When I did that, I wasn’t really thinking about what other people would think, because I did it for me. … I intended to paint a cross in this particular painting, but I did it in the shape of a star, because I think the cross and the message of the cross are the center of the Christmas story. … When I returned to the room, where she was on the easel, I immediately saw another cross that I did not intend to be there, and it is perfectly positioned at Jesus’ feet.
“Someone posted it and you know what those things are like, it just went viral and went everywhere,” she recalls. “This painting is all over the world. I hear people from all over the world. “
But in 2018, Willard’s son emailed her that someone noticed that the painting was allegedly censored by Facebook. She said: “Soon after I heard about it, I started hearing from other people who shared it and said they were not able to share, that it was blocked”. She said Facebook released the post the next day, prompting her to speculate that many people must have complained.
Snopes verified the claim and confirmed that Facebook “briefly overlaid a religious image with a warning screen about ‘violent or graphic content'”, but noted that “the same image can be viewed freely on Facebook for years, not been deleted or blocked so that users could no longer see it, and the warning screen was soon removed. “
Willard told FOX8 that someone told her that the painting was censored again for allegedly violent content. She said: “It almost happened again, well, it was two years and one day, it happened again. And they blocked it for violent content. That’s what I said. … Either Santa Claus is violent, or the baby Jesus is violent, or both together. “
“Willard adds that she spoke to someone who managed to contact Facebook, where a representative told her that the image was blocked because of the social media company’s algorithms,” reported FOX8.
It is not clear whether the image was actually “blocked” or overlaid again with the “violent content” warning, as it would have been in 2018.
Willard stated: “I don’t know how many posts from people he considers appropriate to block; it is more than one because there are a lot of people who say “I tried to share this and see what happened. … This painting is all over the world… I hear about people all over the world. “
Asked about “how many things” had she seen on Facebook that she would think would be classified as violent, Willard laughed: “This is a question loaded right here.” Asked what word she would use to categorize her painting instead of “violence”, Willard said simply, “I would classify it as worship.”
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