Facebook takes down footage from child 'torture' report

Facebook wants to be in the news business, but it's finding that being a media platform is harder than it looks.

On Monday evening, ABC news program Four Corners delivered a report that detailed the shocking abuse of child detainees in the Northern Territory. It included footage of teenagers being tear gassed and one boy being bound in a manner that would not look out of place in Guantanamo Bay, and the outlet shared a number of those clips on Facebook.

On Tuesday morning, Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour tweeted that Facebook had removed the videos.

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A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Mashable Australia that two videos from the news story had been reported and removed for containing child nudity. One video, which contains footage of the tear gassing of six boys at Darwin's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in 2014, has since been restored upon further review. The other will remain taken down.

"The second video does contain child nudity and so we cannot restore it," he said. "Our Community Standards do not allow any nudity of minors to be shared on our services, even if they are shared with the purpose of condemning it.

"We review millions of reports each week and from time to time we make a mistake and work to rectify this where we become aware of this."

According to the ABC, this is the video Facebook removed. Warning: The video contains graphic images some readers may find disturbing.

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The ABC has expressed concern to Facebook over the incident. "Facebook has told us the other video contravenes its policy on child nudity, as it shows a boy's bare bottom," it said in a statement.

"ABC News gave careful consideration to publishing these images, which are evidence of the mistreatment of a child and not in any way gratuitous, and we believe their publication is strongly in the public interest."

The censoring of news content has been an ongoing issue for the social media platform. Whatever you think of WikiLeaks and its most recent dump of Democratic National Committee party emails, there's no reason why its links should be blocked on Facebook -- an issue the company's Chief Security Officer tweeted Sunday had been "fixed."

Although Facebook said the video had disappeared thanks to a "glitch," footage posted by Diamond Reynolds of the aftermath of the police shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, in Minnesota in July was also scrubbed from the platform for around one hour.

The footage from the ABC report may be disturbing, but it's brutally necessary.

That's the news, and Facebook should confront that reality.

UPDATE: July 26, 2016, 4:53 p.m. AEST ABC statement added.