52 NIPPED IN THE BUD

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SEXY STUDENT BILLBOARD CAUSES CONTROVERSY IN TAIWAN

A male Taiwanese student recently made news headlines with an art project that consists of a sexy roadside billboard that is not what it seems to be.

Facebook has a very strict policy when it comes to nudity, but this policy is often inconsistently enforced. For example, photos showing female breasts are considered nudity and are almost instantly removed by the Facebook algorithm. However, the tool is far from perfect, and it has a tough time distinguishing between male and female nipples, especially in the case of feminine-looking men.

This was the case with Wu Zong-dai, a slender, long-haired art student from Shezi village in Tainan county, who recently had an artistic picture of himself censored from Facebook for indecent exposure. The experience gave him an idea.

Wu, a graduate student at the University of Southern Arts in Tainan, was intrigued by Facebook’s decision to remove the photo, which showed him lying on a couch, wearing female lingerie. His bra is slipping from his shoulders, and one of his nipples is showing, but since Facebook does not consider male nipples nudity, he feels that he was censored unfairly. It is still unclear whether he will be able to appeal the removal. However, the experience made him curious about how real people would react to his photo.

The Taiwanese student rented a roadside billboard in his quiet little village and put up a huge version of the same photo, removed by Facebook. Then, he just sat back and waited for people’s reactions to it. He didn’t have to wait very long. The racy picture quickly attracted the locals’ attention. Within hours, someone alerted the police, and officers started asking around, trying to find the criminal who was violating public decency laws.

When the police found Wu and warned him that he could be charged with indecent exposure, the student calmly explained that he was the “girl” in the photo and that the billboard was an art project. So, he was off the hook with the police, but not with his own university.

Members of the faculty tried to convince Wu to take down the billboard because it risked affecting the reputation of his university. However, Wu refused, explaining that the name of the university was not mentioned anywhere on the billboard and that there was no legal reason to have the image removed.

Even though people started accepting Wu Zong-dai’s billboard more, after learning that the person featured in the photo was actually a man, the student has been asked by village officials to take it down sooner than he had originally planned. Wu paid for the billboard space until March, but he will reportedly have to take it down earlier, because even though he is a man, the fact that he looks like a woman in the controversial photo still puts some people on edge, and his community must be respected.

© odditycentral.com

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