Facebook accused of "abuse of power" on Vietnam war photo censorship

Aftenposten, the biggest selling newspaper in the Scandinavian country, published an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on its front page, following the social network's decision to remove the image of a young girl during a napalm attack, from one of its articles.

Editor-in-chief and chief executive of the paper Espen Egil Hansen accused the company of having too much influence over what is published through its platform by media outlets.

Hansen said that he received an email from an editorial office of Facebook based in Germany, asking to remove the photo from author Tom Egeland's article, before deleting it without a reply from Aftenposten.

"This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California. Editors cannot live with you, Mark, as a master editor," the editor said.

"The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case. This may be a heavy responsibility. Each editor must weigh the pros and cons."

Facebook recently received criticism from conservatives in the US that it was suppressing right-wing views. In response, Zuckerberg replaced human editors with algorithms to decide trending topics and headlines in its news feed.