Facebook’s policies have come under fire in recent weeks: Users are clambering to keep their content protected, and now there's a censorship controversy regarding how Facebook removed a photo that many feel was incorrectly removed. The social networking site is being criticized for taking down a photo of a woman’s elbows that company censors mistook for an exposed breast.

The almost risqué picture of a blond woman in a bathtub with her elbow on the side was posted to Facebook to see how the site would react. The Tumblr based Web publication Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things uploaded the image to test the boundaries of Facebook's photo tolerance.

“So, Here's last night's FB alertness test results: FB moderators can't tell an elbow from a dangerous, filthy, uncanny and violent female breast>> no questions were asked and the post is down> Imagine our surprise >,” wrote Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things in the reposted photo. The new post censors the reddened elbows that Facebook deemed offensive.

Cnet writer Chris Matyszczyk alleges that he contacted Facebook officials after being surprised by their lack of response to its folly.

"Of course we allow the picture,” Matyszczyk claims a Facebook admin replied. “We already have restored the photo and sent an apology to the admin."

Cnet notes that if this had been a real breast, it would be a geometrically unique one. The tech website also points out that Facebook’s policies allow pages dedicated to racism and denying the holocaust, but they strictly oppose any appendage that resembles a breast, even slightly.

Even if the picture had been of a breast, what makes nudity inherently more offensive than some of the other content on Facebook? The Cnet article takes aim at the idea that a breast, or even an elbow that sort of looks like a breast, is “a threat to the community.”

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