Oct 8, 2020
Why some onions were too sexy for Facebook
There are regular onions, and then there are onions too sexy for Facebook, a Canadian seed and garden supply store recently discovered. The Seed Company by EW Gaze, in St John's, Newfoundland, had wanted to post a seemingly innocent advert for Walla Walla onion seeds on Facebook. The ad flagged by Facebook showed Walla Walla onions, known for their size and sweet flavour, piled in a wicker basket with some sliced onion on the side. "We use automated technology to keep nudity off our apps, but sometimes it doesn't know a Walla Walla onion from a, well, you know," Facebook Canada's head of communications, Meg Sinclair, told BBC. "We restored the ad and are sorry for the business's trouble." The company is in the process of digitising its whole inventory to make shopping online more accessible amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr McLean said, and that included boosting some advertisements, like the onion one, on Facebook.
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