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On 3 April 2003, Master Sgt. James E. Valrie saluted a United States flag flying over a desert airfield in southern Iraq at sunset. A photograph of the moment was captured by his wife, Marine Sgt. Tisha Carter-Valrie: That photograph was later released by the U.S. Marine Corps has been widely shared online (often without attribution) in the ensuing years. It has been posted on numerous blogs, web sites, and social media pages, made into tattoos and postcards, and has even been included in multiple Memorial Day messages posted by the rock band KISS. In July 2018, this patriotic and moving photograph became the subject of a small controversy when actor James Woods claimed that he had received a warning about offensive content from Twitter after he shared the image with his followers: We attempted to contact Woods about the warning he allegedly received but did not receive a response. It's possible that he truly did receive such a warning (he didn't state whether the image was accompanied by any text, which could have been the offensive portion of the tweet), but we're skeptical that the image alone raised any red flags with Twitter, for a number of reasons. For starters, this isn't the first time this photograph has been shared on the social network. In fact, Woods himself previously used this image in 2015 to call for a boycott of PacSun after the clothing retailer was criticized for selling a t-shirt featuring an upside-down American flag: That 2015 tweet has resided on Woods' timeline for three years without issue. As of this writing, it is still available. We searched Twitter for other instances of people sharing this photograph over the years and came up with numerous examples, including at least one case in which a user adopted the image as their profile pic, and a tweet from Lara Trump in May 2018. If Twitter truly deemed the image offensive, these posts would have likely been taken down. However, we've yet to come across any credible instances of the social network removing this photograph for violating its rules. When we reached out to the company to find out why (or if) they had issued a warning to Woods after he allegedly posted the photograph, they told us that they couldn't comment on the activity of an individual account. They did say, however, that Twitter would never take action on accounts or content that are not in violation of our rules. So is the photograph in violation of Twitter's rules? The social network's guidelines are extensive, but we couldn't find any provisions under which images of national flags, soldiers, or patriotic activities would be deemed offensive. Twitter's rules do cover topics such as copyright infringement, hateful conduct, spam, offensive content, and threats, but this photograph wouldn't appear to fall under any of those categories: As it has been repeatedly shared on Twitter without issue for a number of years, it seems safe to say that this photograph of a marine saluting a flag does not violate the social network's terms of service. Woods' claim that his posting of the image triggered an offensive content warning is reminiscent of a ploy used by troll Facebook pages to stir up anger over non-existent issues. One popular image of a little boy saluting a flag is frequently shared, for instance, as if its hateful content were being removed from Facebook (despite the fact that the banned image is included in the very posts claiming it has been removed): We investigated this rumor back in 2015 and found that it, too, was false. It's possible that Woods received a warning message about offensive content after posting an image of a marine saluting a flag, but if so, it's likely that the warning had more to do with the accompanying text than the image itself. It's also possible that the warning Woods allegedly received was due to a Twitter user, not the social network itself, flagging the content for being inappropriate for some unexplained reason. The original tweet Woods spoke of is not on his timeline (nor did we find any record of it in archives of Woods' page, nor in any mentions from his followers, further adding to our skepticism about the claim), and the actor did not provide specifics about the content of the tweet (other than the inclusion of a photograph). Therefore, we're unable to comment on which part of Woods' message could have been deemed offensive. We can say, however, that the photograph of Master Sgt. James E. Valrie saluting the United States flag is not itself in violation of Twitter's rules. One final note on this viral photograph: The image shared by Woods (and so many others on Twitter) shows the flag at half-mast, but this is actually a doctored version of the original. Marine Sgt. Carter-Valrie, who took the photograph, told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 that although the image of her late husband (Master Sgt. Valrie passed away in 2009 after a battle with kidney cancer) was a wonderful tribute, she was dismayed at how the image had been manipulated over the years to serve various political purposes: Carter-Valrie provided a copy of the original photograph, as well as two subsequent snaps of her late husband as he lowered the flag in Iraq, to the Los Angeles Times:
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