Prime Minister Condemns Facebook New Policy On Beheading Videos

British Prime Minister David Cameron today condemned Facebook as 'irresponsible' after lifting a ban on gruesome videos of people being beheaded by Jihadists.

The Prime Minister said the social network was wrong to secretly change its policy and must justify its actions to parents and users of the site.

The U.S. firm had banned footage of decapitation on its site in May citing concerns that it would cause long-term psychological damage.

But Facebook, which is open to anyone over the age of 13, now claims its users should be able to watch as long as they condemn these videos, not celebrate them. 

Writing on Twitter, Mr Cameron said: 'It's irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. 

'They must explain their actions to worried parents.'

Suicide prevention charities also condemned the decision saying the material is 'psychologically destructive'.

'It only takes seconds of exposure to such graphic material to leave a permanent trace - particularly in a young person's mind,' Dr Arthur Cassidy, who runs the Yellow Ribbon Program in Northern Ireland, said today.

'The more graphic and colourful the material is, the more psychologically destructive it becomes.'

The change in policy was brought in quietly and only discovered by a user who said Facebook was refusing to remove a page showing a clip of a masked man killing a woman.

‘This is absolutely horrible, distasteful and needs to be removed... there are too many young minds that can see this. I'm 23 and I'm very disturbed after seeing a couple of seconds of it,’ wrote one user.

Despite now allowing decapitation footage, the social network’s terms and conditions say it will continue to remove banned material including an exposed woman’s breasts.

‘Photos that show a fully exposed breast where the child is not actively engaged in nursing do violate the Facebook Terms,’ the site said.

But the social network has come under repeated fire from mothers whose pictures showing children breast-feeding are deleted and their accounts closed.

Last year, the group banned a picture of a woman reclining in her bath tub with the only nudity visible being her shoulder and her elbow, although the pose appeared to be inappropriate.

The snap was uploaded by web magazine Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things to test how the social network's terms of service deal with pictures that are misleading.

It posed the question of whether the photo-sharing website content policies are based on indecency or the mere appearance of indecency.

'Since some people object to graphic video of this nature, we are working to give people additional control over the content they see,' said a spokesperson for Facebook.

'This may include warning them in advance that the image they are about to see contains graphic content.'