Instagram Censorship

Instagram has announced it will be introducing a new nudity policy this week, which will now allow pictures of women holding, cupping or wrapping their arms around their breasts.

Instagram said the change was prompted by a campaign by Nyome Nicholas-Williams, a Black British plus-sized model, who had accused the Facebook-owned company of removing images showing her covering her breasts with her arms due to racial biases in its algorithm.

According to Thomson Reuters, Instagram apologized last month to Nicholas-Williams and said it would update its policy, amid global concern over racism in technology following the global Black Lives Matter protests this year.

Hundreds of porn stars and sex workers had their Instagram accounts deleted this year, and many say that they're being held to a different standard than mainstream celebrities.

I should be able to model my Instagram account on Sharon Stone or any other verified profile, but the reality is that doing that would get me deleted, says Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild and one of the leading voices in the battle that adult stars are waging to stay on the platform.

Ms Evans' group has collected a list of more than 1,300 performers who claim that their accounts have been deleted by Instagram's content moderators for violations of the site's community standards, despite not showing any nudity or sex.

They discriminate against us because they don't like what we do for a living, Ms Evans says.

...Read the full article from bbc.com

Facebook has launched a new feature allowing Instagram users to flag posts they claim contain fake news to its fact-checking partners for vetting.

The move is part of a wider raft of measures the social media giant has taken to appease the authorities who claim that 'fake news' is the root of all social ills.

Launched in December 2016 following the controversy surrounding the impact of Russian meddling and online fake news in the US presidential election, Facebook's partnership now involves more than 50 independent 'fact-checkers' in over 30 countries .

The new flagging feature for Instagram users was first introduced in the US in mid-August and has now been rolled out globally.

Users can report potentially false posts by clicking or tapping on the three dots that appear in the top right-hand corner, selecting report, it's inappropriate and then false information.

No doubt the facility will be more likely to report posts that people don't like rather for 'false information'.

Instagram is adding an option for users to report posts they claim are false. The photo-sharing website is responding to increasing pressure to censor material that government's do not like.

Results then rated as false are removed from search tools, such as Instagram's explore tab and hashtag search results.

The new report facility on Instagram is being initially rolled out only in the US.

Stephanie Otway, a Facebook company spokeswoman Said:

This is an initial step as we work towards a more comprehensive approach to tackling misinformation.

Posting false information is not banned on any of Facebook's suite of social media services, but the company is taking steps to limit the reach of inaccurate information and warn users about disputed claims.

Dozens of adult performers have picketed outside of Instagram's Silicon Valley headquarters over censorship guidelines and the arbitrary inconsistent enforcement of the rules. They said that this has led to hundreds of thousands of account suspensions and is imperiling their livelihoods.

Adult performers led the protest on Wednesday, but other users including artists, sex workers, queer activists, sex education platforms and models say they have been affected by the platform's opaque removal system. The action was organized by the Adult Performer Actors Guild, the largest labor union for the adult film industry.

They were complaining in particular in the way that the company takes down accounts without warning or explanation and provide no real recourse or effective appeal system.

Amber Lynn, an American porn star based in Los Angeles, said her account was terminated without warning or explanation two months ago. She had more than 100,000 followers.

I sent [Instagram] multiple emails through my lawyer and they will still not tell me why they did it, she said. They do not answer you, do not give you an opportunity to correct any problems or even tell you what problems they had to begin with so you can avoid it in the future.

A chef has criticised Instagram after it decided that a photograph she posted of two pigs' trotters and a pair of ears needed to be protected from 'sensitive' readers.

Olia Hercules, a writer and chef who regularly appears on Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch , shared the photo alongside a caption in which she praised the quality and affordability of the ears and trotters before asking why the cuts had fallen out of favour with people in the UK.

However Hercules later discovered that the image had been censored by the photo-sharing app with a warning that read: Sensitive content. This photo contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing.

Hercules hit back at the decision on Twitter, condemning Instagram and the general public for becoming detached from reality.

A scientific study has found that Instagram' s decision to ban certain words linked to pro-anorexia posts may have actually made the problem worse.

The study, conducted by a team at Georgia Tech, found that the censoring of terms like 'thighgap, thinspiration and secretsociety, commonly used by anorexia sufferers, initially caused a decrease in use.

However, they found that users adapted by simply making up new, almost identical words to get around Instagram's moderation, often by altering spellings to create terms like thygap and thynspooo .

Instagram's censoring of pro-eating disorder (ED) content began in 2012, when they began limiting what users could see when searching for certain terms.

Some terms, like #thinspiration, simply return no results when searched for in the app. Other terms, like #thin, are still searchable, but users first have to read a message warning them about the content and directing them towards ED support services before they can see any pictures.

The researchers believe that by accidentally prompting the creation of these terms, Instagram polarised the vulnerable pro-ED community and actually increased how much members engaged with the content. Munmun De Choudury, an assistant professor at the school, said: Likes and coments on these new tags were 15 to 30 per cent higher than the originals.

In a picture, a little girl is seen lifting her dress to admire her new underpants, evidence to her of her first steps in toilet training. But the tummy and underpants are considered by Instagram to be nudity. Adamo was warned by the site about posting inappropriate content, but not being able to recognise sexual tones in her children's photos fast enough she had her account deleted before she could resolve it.

Adamo's account has since been reactivated after mounting furore. But an incident like this still begs the questioin: are photography sharing sites being unnecessarily rigid about content and prudish about flesh? Facebook, for instance, has only just lifted its long held ban on the appearance of female nipple in breastfeeding photos. Advertisement

Indeed, there's a deliberate reluctance to involve themselves in the debate required for interpreting content. Blanket policies alleviate social media sites from needing to pay people, rather than inexpensive filter programs, to do specialised decision making. Adamo, cofounder of a fashionable online baby boutique had over 36,000 followers of her family photo album on Instagram before her account was removed.

The Daily Mail goes into overdrive and asks:

Has American Apparel gone too far? Shoppers attack vile and disturbing T-shirt showing menstruation

A unisex T-shirt emblazoned with a drawing of a woman's vagina stained with menstrual blood has been deemed vile , gross and disturbing since going on sale at American Apparel.

The retailer notes on its website that the $32 Period Tee was designed by 20-year-old Toronto-based artist, Petra Collins, who creates portraits exploring female sexuality and teen girl culture.

However the Daily Mail couldn't really back up the 'outrage' All the have are a few unimaginative tweets eg:

@sawissinger wrote, this is the worst thing I can possibly think of, while

@kawaii_origami tweeted, are you kidding me?

Update: More 'outrage'

18th October 2013. See article from dailymail.co.uk

The designer behind American Apparel's menstruation T-shirt, has had her Instagram account deleted after uploading an image of her unshaven bikini line.

Petra Collins posted a snap of herself from the waist down wearing a bathing suit bottom with her pubic hair peeping out to the photo-sharing site last week.

However, she revealed to OysterMag.com today that the picture attracted so many complaints from users that her account - which had over 25,000 followers - has since been deleted.

The artist said dozens of people deemed her self-portrait horrible and disgusting. Voicing her annoyance, she wrote:

To those who reported me, to those who are disgusted by my body . . . I want you to thoughtfully dissect your own reaction to these things.

Please think about WHY you felt this way, WHY this image was so shocking, WHY you have no tolerance for it.