Only, there was nothing sexually suggestive about it.
Earlier today Devolver Digital, the publishers of GRIS—one of our Games Of The Year—tweeted this:
Facebook rejected a GRIS launch trailer ad for this ‘sexually suggestive’ scene so this year is going great so far. pic.twitter.com/frVaYOXIHe
— Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) January 7, 2019
That scene is…not suggestive of sex. Especially once you see it moving, as part of the launch trailer:
A Devolver representative tells Kotaku “this is stupid”.
“We appealed and they said the appeal was rejected based on the grounds that Facebook does not allow nudity. First of all, she’s a statue and second, absolutely no nudity is shown in that photo, nor is this what any reasonable person would consider ‘sexualized content’.”
As part of their appeal process, Devolver did a search for other “sexualized content” on Facebook, and quickly found stuff like this:
So, yeah, stupid. Maybe a second appeal will actually get in front of some human eyeballs, rather than Facebook’s all-powerful, completely useless algorithm.
Just for reference, here’s the full launch trailer, complete with absolutely no sexually suggestive content:
Comments
10 responses to “GRIS Trailer Gets Banned From Facebook For “Sexually Suggestive” Content”
Given Devolvers history this might just another stunt, take it with a grain of salt.
I doubt Devolver would pull an EA like stunt to get there game out there.
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/06/eas-fake-protest-riles-some-religious/
They’ve done it before. They tried setting up in a car park owned by the city of LA next to E3 one year, but the city revoked all permits except vehicle parking. Devolver loudly and publicly tried to blame the ESA for it, which both ESA and the city denied.
Devolver has a track record of ‘to hell with everyone else’ publicity stunts, as far back as when they were still called Gamecock and stormed the stage at the 2007 Spike VGAs while Ken Levine was trying to accept the GOTY award for Bioshock, so they could publicise themselves. Ken didn’t even get to give his acceptance speech, they ate up all the time he was given.
The algorithms seem to have picked out what appears to be a pose reminiscent of oral sex, then someone in Facebook’s overworked review department in the Philippines was drifting off at the end of their normal 14 hour shift.
Still, I blame American corporate advertisers and media shock jocks for insisting that the internet contain only content suitable for morning television (that is, advertorials, cartoons, music videos and chat shows).
Be honest, most music videos are sexual content
Sure, as is a lot of advertising. It would be interesting to tease out exactly why one type of sexual content is acceptable and another isn’t, although I expect that the answer is that media produced to sell stuff is simply allowed a lot more leeway than random stuff thrown onto the internet by the average Joe.
Obviously a game trailer is also used to sell product, but in this case we’re talking about something that corporates would self evidently not have a problem with accidentally being caught up in an algorithm designed to trap user-generated content, not mainstream corporate-generated content.
You expected this to be Facebook, but it was me, Tumblr!
Save nsfw JoJo! Save us from the shitty algorithms!
Clearly tentacle porn with asphyxiation fetish.
You could say 0:48 is almost like the money shot from a Venom movie.
Facebook should be burned to the ground.