Images and posts of cultural importance sometimes fly in the face of conventional standards of offense, a fact that online services haven't always fully parsed. As a social-media gatekeeper, Facebook acknowledged some of its failures in this regard on Friday by announcing that it had begun easing up on banning images and posts that violate the site's guidelines—while simultaneously contending with allegations that it had previously bent those rules in favor of Donald Trump.

The guideline-related announcement follows an early September dust-up over the site banning and removing a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken during the Vietnam War. The photo shows a crowd of crying, screaming children, including a fully nude nine-year-old girl, running away from a napalm strike. At the time, Facebook had summarily banned all posts of the image, even by those protesting its removal from the site. In some cases, Facebook issued temporary site bans to users who had uploaded the image. The social media giant eventually relented and allowed those original posts to reappear as they had originally been posted.

Facebook says that it will not update the site's current guidelines, which prohibit images that include "genitals, "fully exposed buttocks," and "some images of female breasts if they expose the nipple." (Those rules were updated in 2015 to permit images of breastfeeding, years after users complained about that restriction.) Instead, the site will "begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards," according to the pair of Facebook VPs who co-signed the letter.

The letter acknowledged the high number of variables that come into play when making these decisions, including laws and cultural standards that vary by country. Perhaps that's why Facebook didn't offer a more specific or concrete litmus test for what can stay on the site. Instead, Facebook cited an unnamed panel of "experts, publishers, journalists, photographers, law enforcement officials, and safety advocates" who will be called upon in the coming weeks to help the company make judgement calls.

Speaking of Facebook and offense...

Coincidentally, Facebook made its announcement the same day that a Wall Street Journal report alleged company in-fighting over Donald Trump's posts on the service. The report, citing "people familiar with the matter," said that employees argued that some of Trump's posts, particularly those which called for bans of Muslims entering the United States, violated the very same guidelines that got content like the Vietnam photos taken down. (The most forceful of these removals came in December of last year, when Trump linked to a statement at his own site titled "Preventing Muslim Immigration.")

According to the report, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ultimately made the call that same month that "it would be inappropriate to censor the candidate." At this point, employees began complaining to Zuckerberg in person, and members of the reviews team specifically threatened to quit over the matter.

In a statement responding to the WSJ report, Facebook pointed to internal checks on a post's "context" and its "value of political discourse." A company spokesperson added that such posts have "become an important part of the conversation around who the next US president will be."

Listing image by Facebook