CLOSE Norway's largest newspaper accused Mark Zuckerberg of abusing his power after Facebook removed the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from a post. Time

Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing a napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places in Vietnam on June 8, 1972. (Photo: AP, Nick Ut)

Facebook decided Friday to reinstate the iconic, Vietnam War-era photograph of a naked girl running from a napalm attack.

“After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography. In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time," Facebook said in a statement.

The tech giant went on to say "Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed."

Facebook said it would review its mechanisms to allow sharing of the image in the future.

The editor of Norway's largest newspaper wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Friday earlier in which he accused the Facebook chief of "abusing your power" because of the social media firm's decision to remove an iconic, Vietnam War-era photograph of a naked girl running from a napalm attack.

In the letter, published on Aftenposten's front page, Espen Egil Hansen said he found it "hard to believe you have thought it through thoroughly" and the media had a responsibility to publish disturbing images.

Hansen said that the 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut was taken down by Facebook after it was published there by Tom Egeland, a Norwegian writer. Facebook has a strict policy on images that show nudity.

Hansen said that when Aftenposten subsequently posted the photo on its own Facebook page it received a message from the technology giant asking it to remove or pixelate the photo. Hansen said Zuckerberg should live up to his role as "the world's most powerful editor."

“I am worried that the world’s most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way,” he added. He said that Facebook needed to be able to "distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs" and that the "right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California. Editors can't live with you, Mark, as master editor."

A Pew Research study from 2016 found that 44% of U.S. adults get their news through Facebook. The removal of the photo and subsequent outcry reflects growing tensions between the world's largest social networking site and traditional newspapers and publishers.

Kim Phuc, the then 9-year-old girl in the center of the photo is seen naked and crying, her clothes and layers of skin melted away after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong fighters in South Vietnam.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg also joined the debate Friday, saying that the image helped shaped world history. "Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such images,” she said.

Facebook also deleted Solberg's post expressing support for Egeland, the writer. She had shared his post in which he had written that Ut's photo was one of seven that had "changed the history of warfare."

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2cJqV1U</s>Norway’s prime minister joined a campaign by a Norwegian newspaper on Friday accusing Facebook Inc of undue censorship by barring a Vietnam War era news photograph showing a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack.

The social media giant erased the iconic photograph, showing children running from a bombed village, from the Facebook pages of several Norwegian authors and media outlets, including top-selling newspaper Aftenposten.

Captured in 1972 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its centre.

Aftenposten splashed the photograph across the front page of its newspaper on Friday, next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined “Dear Mark Zuckerberg”, arguing that the network was undermining democracy.

Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg then posted the photograph on her own Facebook profile, writing that it had contributed to change the course of world history. The image later disappeared from the page.

“Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such pictures. It limits the freedom of speech,” Solberg wrote. “I say yes to healthy, open and free debate – online and wherever else we go. But I say no to this form of censorship.”

Solberg in her posting also praised Facebook for combating pictures of child abuse. Aftenposten, in its editorial, said Facebook should be able to tell the difference between child pornography and famous war photography.

Facebook said in a statement its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

“While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others,” a company spokesperson wrote.

“We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions won’t always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.”

In May, Solberg was present when Facebook opened its first Norwegian office.</s>Mark Zuckerberg is facing fierce criticism after Facebook censored one of the most famous war photographs in history.

The editor of a top Norwegian newspaper on Thursday addressed an open letter to Zuckerberg saying he was "upset, disappointed -- well, in fact even afraid" about Facebook's impact on media freedom.

Espen Egil Hansen said his newspaper, Aftenposten, received a demand from Facebook to remove the iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack.

"Less than 24 hours after the email was sent, and before I had time to give my response, you intervened yourselves and deleted the article as well as the image from Aftenposten's Facebook page," Hansen wrote.

Related: Facebook ditches humans in favor of algorithms for trending news

His complaint highlights growing concern about Facebook's vast and expanding influence over news and other content seen by more than a billion people around the world.

"You create rules that don't distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs," Hansen wrote to Zuckerberg. "Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgment."

Facebook (FB, Tech30) said it recognizes that the photo is iconic, but stressed that it's "difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others."

"We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community," the company said. "Our solutions won't always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them."

The pressure intensified on Friday when Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg accused the company of deleting the image from her own public page.

"What they do in removing such pictures, whatever their reasons, is to edit our common history," Solberg said in a statement that urged Facebook to face up to its responsibilities as a major media platform.

Related: The girl in the picture -- a journey from war to forgiveness

The saga began when Norwegian author Tom Egeland posted a series of historic war photographs on Facebook.

The social network removed one of the images -- the famous Vietnam photo of the naked girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing the napalm attack -- and later suspended Egeland's account after he posted a reaction to the deletion.

When Aftenposten posted its article about what happened to Egeland on Facebook, that too fell foul of the rules.

"You even censor criticism against and a discussion about the decision -- and you punish the person who dares to voice criticism," Hansen wrote.

The dramatic photo, snapped by Associated Press photojournalist Nick Ut in 1972, won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most memorable images of the 20th Century. Despite its graphic nature, the photo has been credited with helping to turn U.S. public sentiment against the war in Vietnam.

Hansen told CNNMoney's Nina Dos Santos on Friday that Zuckerberg is now "the most influential editor-in-chief in the world."

"With that follows a great responsibility," Hansen said. "I ask him to think through what he is doing ... to the public debate all over the world."

Rolv Erik Ryssdal, chief executive of Aftenposten's publisher, said in a statement that Facebook's position "is not acceptable" and constitutes an attack on democracy and freedom of expression.

Zuckerberg has tried to fend off pressure about Facebook's role in managing what articles and images people see.

"We're a technology company, we're not a media company," he said last month. "We do not produce any of the content."

Facebook says it relies on users to report offensive content. Items they flag are then reviewed by teams of workers around the world who speak many languages, including Norwegian.

But some media experts say the system is fatally flawed.

"Whether intentional or desired or not, Facebook does now play a critical role in the distribution of news," Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, wrote earlier this year. "An editor -- or perhaps an ethicist-in-chief -- could help set the services standards and policies."

Jarvis seized on Hansen's letter to Zuckerberg, tweeting that it's an example of "exactly why I keep suggesting Facebook needs a top level journalist."

Facebook was engulfed by controversy in May over how news stories were chosen for its "trending topics" box. Last month, it removed the humans responsible for manually writing news descriptions and headlines for the section, turning the job over to software programs.</s>Mark Zuckerberg is coming under criticism after Facebook censored one of the most famous war photographs in history.

The editor of a top Norwegian newspaper on Thursday addressed an open letter to Zuckerberg saying he was "upset, disappointed -- well, in fact even afraid" over the impact of Facebook algorithms on media freedom.

Espen Egil Hansen said his newspaper, Aftenposten, received a demand from Facebook on Wednesday to remove the iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack.

"Less than 24 hours after the email was sent, and before I had time to give my response, you intervened yourselves and deleted the article as well as the image from Aftenposten's Facebook page," Hansen wrote.

Related: Facebook ditches humans in favor of algorithms for trending news

His complaint highlights growing concern about Faceboo' (FB, Tech30)s vast and expanding influence over news and other content seen by more than a billion people around the world.

"You create rules that don't distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs," Hansen wrote to Zuckerberg. "Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgment."

The saga began when Norwegian author Tom Egeland posted a series of historic war photographs on Facebook.

Related: The girl in the picture -- a journey from war to forgiveness

The social network then removed one of the images -- the famous Vietnam photo of the naked girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing the napalm attack -- and later suspended Egeland's account after he posted a reaction to the deletion, according to the Norwegian newspaper.

The photo, snapped by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most memorable images of the 20th Century. Despite its graphic nature, the publication of the photo has been credited with helping to turn U.S. public sentiment against the war in Vietnam.

When Aftenposten shared its article on Facebook about what happened to Egeland, that too fell foul of the platform's rules.

"You even censor criticism against and a discussion about the decision -- and you punish the person who dares to voice criticism," Hansen wrote, describing Zuckerberg as "the most powerful editor in the world."

Zuckerberg has tried to fend off pressure about Facebook's role in managing what articles and images people see.

"We're a technology company, we're not a media company," he said last month. "We do not produce any of the content."

"Whether intentional or desired or not, Facebook does now play a critical role in the distribution of news," Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, wrote in a blog post earlier this year. "An editor -- or perhaps an ethicist-in-chief -- could help set the services standards and policies."

Jarvis seized on the Norwegian editor's letter to Zuckerberg on Thursday, tweeting that it's an example of "exactly why I keep suggesting Facebook needs a top level journalist."

Facebook was engulfed by controversy in May over how news stories were chosen for its "trending topics" box. Last month, it removed the humans responsible for manually writing news descriptions and headlines for the section, turning the job over to software programs.</s>OSLO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Norway's prime minister accused Facebook Inc on Friday of censorship after it deleted an iconic Vietnam War era news photograph of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack from pages, including her own.

In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Erna Solberg said Facebook was editing history by erasing images of the 1972 photograph of children running from a bombed village.

Facebook erased the photograph when Solberg and other ministers in her right-wing cabinet posted it on their Facebook pages, citing its guidelines banning child nudity.

Soldberg had posted the image on Friday in a protest after Facebook had already erased the photo from sites of Norwegian authors and the daily Aftenposten.

Captured by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its centre.

Solberg said Facebook's ban put unacceptable limits on freedom of speech. "They must see the difference between editing out child pornography and editing out history," she told Reuters.

"It's perfectly possible for a company like Facebook to sort this out. Otherwise we risk more censorship," she said.

Protesting Facebook's move, Solberg re-posted the photo with a black square covering the naked girl, and published a range of other historic images blacking over faces of people such as Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill.

She also posted a version of the "Tank Man" image from China's 1989 Tiananmen uprising, with a black square covering a man standing in front of a row of army tanks.

Solberg wrote on her Facebook account: "I want my children and other children to grow up in a society where history is taught as it was."

Norway is a big investor in Facebook. Its $891 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, had a stake of 0.52 percent in Facebook worth $1.54 billion at the start of 2016.

Aftenposten splashed the Vietnam photograph across the front page of its newspaper on Friday, next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined "Dear Mark Zuckerberg", arguing that the network was undermining democracy.

Facebook said in a statement its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

"While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it's difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others," a company spokesperson wrote.

"We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions won't always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them."

Solberg told Reuters she intends to maintain her account on the network.</s>Facebook has deleted a post by the Norwegian prime minister in an escalating row over the website’s decision to remove content featuring the Pulitzer-prize winning “napalm girl” photograph taken during the Vietnam War.

Erna Solberg, the Conservative prime minister, called on Facebook to “review its editing policy” after it deleted her post voicing support for a Norwegian newspaper that had inadvertently fallen foul of the social media’s guidelines.

Ms Solberg was one of a string of Norwegian politicians who shared the iconic image after Facebook deleted a post from Tom Egeland, a writer who had included the picture by Nick Ut, as one of seven photographs he said had “changed the history of warfare”.

Egeland was subsequently suspended from Facebook, and his standoff with the social media giant was reported by the daily newspaper Aftenposten, which used the same image in its reporting of the story and itself came under pressure from Facebook to delete the picture.

Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief, Espen Egil Hansen, said the newspaper had received a message from Facebook asking it to “either remove or pixelise” the photograph.

He refused and wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg saying he was failing to live up to his role as “the world’s most powerful editor”.

In her intervention on Friday, the Norwegian prime minister wrote that the photograph, entitled The Terror of War and featuring a naked 9-year-old Kim Phuc running away from a napalm attack, had “shaped world history”.

Ms Solberg added: “I appreciate the work Facebook and other media do to stop content and pictures showing abuse and violence ... But Facebook is wrong when they censor such images.”

Before being deleted by Facebook this morning, her post went on to say the website’s decision “helps to curb freedom of expression”, adding: “I say no to this form of censorship.”

Ms Solberg said: “It is highly regrettable that Facebook has removed a post from my Facebook page. What they achieve by removing such images, good as the intentions may be, is to edit our common history. I wish today’s children will also have the opportunity to see and learn from historical mistakes and events. This is important.

“I hope Facebook uses this opportunity to review its editing policy, and assumes the responsibility a large company managing a broad communication platform should take.”

On the decision to delete the prime minister’s post, Mr Hansen told the Guardian: “At least they don’t discriminate, we have to give them credit for that.”

The chief executive of Aftenposten’s publisher, Schibsted Media Group, said Facebook had tried to stop the newspaper publishing “one of the most important photos of our time”.

Rolv Erik Ryssdal added: “It is not acceptable. Facebook’s censorship is an attack on the freedom of expression - and therefore on democracy.”

Mr Ryssdal said Facebook was increasingly powerful in Norway’s media market, capturing 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner (€162 million) of advertising while paying “only crumbs in taxes back to society”.

“Schibsted Media Group believes it is very important that the Norwegian media industry now gather to create an independent alternative to the American giants’ enormous power in the advertising market,” he said.

“We are talking about the prerequisite for independent journalism. Facebook’s treatment of Aftenposten is another proof of the importance of this.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “While we recognise that this photo is iconic, it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community.

“Our solutions won’t always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.”

The posts that were later deleted would firstly have been reported by a user to Facebook’s community standards team, who would then have made the decision to remove them, rather than being removed automatically by an algorithm.</s>SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook backtracked Friday on a decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after its block on the historic image sparked outrage.

The online giant stopped short of apologizing, saying the image had been flagged for violating standards regarding inappropriate posts at the world’s leading social network.

“An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography,” Facebook said in a statement.

“In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.”

Taken by photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for the Associated Press, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack is considered one of the war’s defining images. It was honored with the Pulitzer Prize.

An active social media user, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg defied Facebook early Friday by posting the photograph, helping to bring the weekslong controversy to a head.

Her post was taken down several hours later, deleted by Facebook, she said.

After Facebook reversed position on the image, Solberg told the BBC she was a “happy prime minister.”

“It shows that using social media can make (a) political change even in social media.”

Solberg refused to back down, re-posting the photo on her Facebook page, along with several other iconic pictures with sections blacked out, in an attempt to illustrate the absurdity of censoring historic images.

“What Facebook is doing by deleting photos like this, as good as their intentions are, is to edit our common history,” she wrote in a post.

Solberg had shared the picture at Facebook in the name of freedom of expression amid a brewing debate in Norway.

The row began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the picture. Facebook promptly deleted it.

Egeland expressed delight in a Twitter message written in Norwegian after the Facebook about-face.

“To all who said ‘there’s no point,’ yes there is a point.”

Norwegians had risen to his defense by publishing the photo, posts that Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

The affair took on such proportions that the Norwegian Press Federation asked the country’s powerful pension fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, to examine whether the censorship practice was in line with its ethical criteria for investments.

At the end of 2015, the fund owned 0.52 percent of Facebook.

Traditional media also voiced concern about the moves by Facebook, which has become a key source of news and information for hundreds of millions of people.

On Friday, Norway’s biggest daily Aftenposten dedicated the front page of its print edition to the photo, and published a two-page open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook said it reversed course after the outcry from its members and that is was examining how its standards were applied in the situation.

“Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal,” California-based Facebook said of the decision to reinstate posts of the image.

Facebook said it was also modifying its review mechanisms to prevent the image from being removed in future, but that process could take some time.

“The photo should be avai lable for sharing in the coming days,” Facebook said.

“We will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward.”

This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of a lack of sensitivity in how it enforces its rules on appropriate content. The company has in the past blocked seminal artworks because they featured nudity.

Facebook is due to go on trial in France, where a schoolteacher accused it of censorship for blocking his account after he posted a photo of a painting by 19th-century master Gustave Courbet called “L’Origine du monde” (The Origin of the World) that depicts a woman’s vagina.

And earlier this year, a Danish lawmaker also complained that Facebook had removed her picture of the Copenhagen statue of the Little Mermaid because of its nudity rules.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) depicted Facebook’s censorship of the Vietnam War photo as a grave violation of freedom of information.

“The ‘decency’ rules used by this social network are so restrictive that they trample on the freedom to inform,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

“We call on Facebook to add respect for the journalistic values of photos to these rules, and to ensure that their rules are never more severe than national legislations.” AFP</s>COPENHAGEN — A Norwegian revolt against Facebook’s nude photo restrictions escalated Friday as the prime minister posted an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack, and the social media network promptly deleted it.

Politicians of all stripes, journalists and regular Norwegians backed Prime Minister Erna Solberg, defiantly sharing the Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut.

“What they do by removing this kind of image is to edit our common history,” Solberg told the AP in a phone interview.

The image shows screaming children running from a burning Vietnamese village. The little girl in in the centre of the frame, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as the napalm melts away layers of her skin.

The protests started last month after Facebook deleted the image from a Norwegian author’s page, saying it violated its rules on nudity.

Many Norwegians posted the photo in protest, and Solberg joined them on Friday, saying social media must distinguish between child pornography and images of historical significance. She said Facebook removed her post as she was on a flight from Oslo to the west coast city of Trondheim.

“Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality,” she told the AP, adding it was the first time one of her Facebook posts was deleted.

Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.

Facebook, in a statement from its European headquarters in London, responded that “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.”

Like its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway takes pride in its freedom of speech. It’s also a largely secular nation with relaxed attitudes about nudity.

Several members of the Norwegian government followed Solberg’s lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, Education Minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was “an iconic photo, part of our history.”

Many of the posts were deleted but Isaksen’s was still up Friday afternoon. The photo was also left untouched on a number of Facebook accounts, including the AP’s.

It would be physically impossible for the company to comb through the hundreds of millions of photos posted each day so it relies on user reports and algorithms to weed out pictures that go against its terms of service.

Photos are often automatically removed if enough people report them. Facebook usually does not proactively remove photos, with some exceptions, such as child pornography.

Because of this, what photos are and aren’t removed can sometimes be inconsistent, and sometimes leads to Facebook reinstating the photos after removing them.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page Friday and also wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.

Hansen said he was “upset, disappointed — well, in fact even afraid — of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.”

The uproar also spread outside of Norway, with the head of Denmark’s journalism union urging people to share Hansen’s open letter. Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who has previously clashed with Facebook over its failure to remove hate speech deemed illegal in Germany, also weighed in, saying “illegal content should vanish from the Internet, not photos that move the whole world.”

Facebook’s statement said it tries to “find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions won’t always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.”

Paul Colford, AP vice-president and director of media relations, said: “The Associated Press is proud of Nick Ut’s photo and recognizes its historical impact. In addition, we reserve our rights to this powerful image.”

Before it was published 44 years ago, AP also had a discussion about the image because it violated the news agency’s policy on full-frontal nudity.

Hal Buell, then AP’s executive news photo editor in New York, said he received a message from Saigon photo editor Horst Faas saying a “controversial picture” was coming up.

“Maybe we discussed it on the desk for 10-15 minutes,” said Buell, who is now retired. “But there is nothing about this picture that is prurient. How can we not publish this picture? It captures the horrors of war. It captures the terrible situation of innocents caught in the cross-fire of the war.”

AP published the image and media worldwide used it, though some chose not to, Buell said.

Facebook now says it will allow posting on the photo, “because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance.”</s>Facebook has reinstated a Vietnam War-era photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, after a public outcry over its removal of the image including harsh criticism from Norway's prime minister.

In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Facebook was editing history by erasing images of the iconic 1972 "Napalm Girl" photograph, which showed children running from a bombed village.

The company initially said the photo violated its Community Standards barring child nudity on the site.

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"After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case," Facebook said in a later statement, adding it recognised "the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time."

Solberg posted the iconic "Napalm Girl" news photograph on her Facebook page after the company had deleted it from sites of Norwegian authors and the daily Aftenposten. Facebook had also removed the photo from the page of the woman who had been photographed as a girl.

Captured by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its centre.

Solberg said Facebook's ban put unacceptable limits on freedom of speech. "They must see the difference between editing out child pornography and editing out history," she told Reuters.

"It's perfectly possible for a company like Facebook to sort this out. Otherwise we risk more censorship," she said.

Protesting Facebook's move, Solberg re-posted the photo with a black square covering the naked girl, and published a range of other historic images blacking over faces of people such as Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill.

She also posted a version of the "Tank Man" image from the 1989 protests in China's Tiananmen Square, with a black square covering a man standing in front of a row of army tanks.

Solberg wrote on her Facebook account: "I want my children and other children to grow up in a society where history is taught as it was."

Aftenposten splashed the Vietnam photograph across its front page on Friday, next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined "Dear Mark Zuckerberg", saying the social network was undermining democracy.

Earlier, Facebook said in a statement its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

Norway is a big investor in Facebook. Its US$891 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, had a stake of 0.52 percent in Facebook worth US$1.54 billion at the start of 2016.

Solberg told Reuters she intended to maintain her Facebook account.</s>Vietnamese-Canadian Phan Thi Kim Phuc delivers her speech before her June 8, 1972 Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph during the Vietnam war, during a lecture meeting in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture on April 13, 2013 (AFP Photo/Jiji Press)

San Francisco (AFP) - Facebook on Friday reversed its decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after the move set off a wave of outrage, including from Norway's prime minister.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," a spokesperson for the world's largest social network said in an email to AFP.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg earlier on Friday posted the photograph, which the US social network says violates its nudity rules.

Taken by photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for the Associated Press, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack is considered one of the war's defining images. It was honored with the Pulitzer Prize.

Solberg's post was taken down several hours later, deleted by Facebook, she said. She said Facebook was seeking "to edit our common history."

The affair began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the picture. Facebook promptly deleted it.

Norwegians rose to his defense by publishing the photo, posts that Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

In its latest statement, Facebook said it had reversed course "after hearing from our community," and examining how its "Community Standards" were applied.

"An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography."

But Facebook said it was allowing the picture to be posted on the world's largest social network and will "adjust our review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward."

"It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days," the statement added.

"We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe."
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten accuses Facebook of censorship because of the website's decision to remove the iconic Vietnam War–era photo "napalm girl" as child pornography.