Facebook bans Christmas Island's juvenile boobies birdwatching tourism ad

When the Christmas Island tourism board decided to promote its lovely juvenile boobies, it never thought it would have Facebook's pervert police on its case. The proposed promotion was a plan to advertise the island's annual Bird 'n' Nature Week, and its population of endangered booby birds.

But the social media site claimed the promoted ad of a baby brown booby with the accompanying text - "Some gorgeous shots here of some juvenile boobies'' - breached decency guidelines, and removed the offending picture. An appeal from Christmas Island marketing bosses to Facebook still failed to get the ad passed.



"We presumed our original advert was blocked automatically so we appealed to Facebook directly who re-affirmed the campaign was banned due to the sexual language, particularly the use of the word `boobies','' said Linda Cash, marketing manager of the Christmas Island Tourism Association.

Three species - the Brown Booby, the Red-footed Booby and the Abbott's Booby, live on the island, 580km south of Java, where the latter is exclusively found.