TechCrunch recently wrote a story on April 10th called “Instagram now Demotes Vaguely Inappropriate Content,” which Instagram later validated with a post in their Help Center.
Overall, I have no moral objection to Instagram hiding my posts from people. Instagram is a private, non-governmental company. They have the right to serve whoever they want, and the right to deny service in part or as a whole for whatever reasons they choose. Here in the United States of America, people often cry “Free Speech!” And while we do have freedom of speech in this country, it only protects speech from governmental repercussions. It means you can’t get arrested for being a racist douchebag shouting racist crap on a street corner. The 1st Amendment does nothing to stop you from civil penalties. In the case of our racist douchebag shouting racist crap on a street corner, the 1st Amendment does nothing to protect him from being fired at his job as a plumbers assistant. (Please note, this is a hypothetical situation, I mean no offense to plumbers. Plumbers are hardworking people and we need more of you guys!) There is no 1st Amendment protection for speech on the virtual property of a private social media company. Most of Instagram’s user base isn’t even American. As I so often say, it’s their playground, we have to play by their rules.
The problem I have is with their unequal enforcement of the rules. Let me show you what I mean. I have 130,000 followers on Instagram. Statistically, that’s a big following, I’m in the top 10% of Instagram users in terms of the number of followers I have. But in terms of many Instagram Models, I am small peanuts. Brittanya Razavi has 14.6 million followers. She is able to post things that I absolutely cannot.
Brittanya has a number of photos on her instagram that show her nipples completely, through absolutely sheer clothing. I’m talking, you can tell what color the gem on her nipple piercings is level of sheer. Not “Is that an areola or a shadow” kind of sheer. Made of mesh or thin white cotton in a swimming pool kind of sheer. Some of these photos have over 1 million likes.
I, on the other hand, have had photos removed and my account shadowbanned for showing far less. In the photo below, I am in a swimming pool up to my collar bone with my arms covering my nipples. I have the full resolution raw image. I’m able to zoom in quite close. In the original image, there is a shadow above my left arm (Camera right) that looked like it could possibly be a bit of areola. So I photoshopped it out from the version I posted on IG and FB just to be safe. But this photo was still removed. This same photo caused my Facebook Page to be deleted with over 21,000 followers. But Facebook is another story all together.
I don’t offer this example out of jealousy. I have stated earlier that I am envious of her following, but I wish her all the success in the world. I’m not mad at her, I’m angry with Instagram for it’s completely unequal enforcement of its own community guidelines. I have photos that show nothing removed, with no real chance of appeal, and others seem to get away with whatever they want to post. To further clarify my position, I do NOT want Brittanya’s photo taken down. I want my own photos, which are much more conservative, to be left up.
The problem with the community guidelines is that they are inconsistently enforced.
We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.
Instagram’s Community Guidelines on nudity
Now we get to the meat of the topic of today’s post. Not only are the guidelines unfairly enforced, but now we have this nebulous “inappropriate” region that has no guidance at all. How am I supposed to understand what is or is not “close to the line” when the line itself is a moving target. That photo above of me in a pool is nowhere near as “close” to inappropriate as stuff we all see on IG every single day. Most of my following considers my account to be very conservative in comparison to the majority of models they follow.
I am a lingerie model. I model lingerie for lingerie companies. I get paid by those companies to appear on social media wearing their lingerie. (For the record, payment is often free lingerie.) I’m not making a living at this. I spend more on photography, equipment, sets, studio time, and software than I actually make every month from social media. I have a very solid day job that pays my bills. Instagram Modeling, my Patreon and my OnlyFans are only for fun. The amount of money I make from those places offsets a little more than 75% of the costs of producing all of the content I make every single week. The balance comes out of my own pocket for the love of the craft.
Let’s take another example. This is a photo from Yandy.com’s Instagram page. If you don’t know, Yandy is a hugely successful lingerie and clubwear company. I love them. I have hundreds of items from Yandy in my collection.
In the above photo, you can see a hint of her nipple. I recreated that exact same pose in that exact same outfit and mine was removed from Instagram for breaking the community guidelines.
How can I be breaking the rules when Yandy is not, and not only that, Yandy was promoting that post in an advertisement on Instagram! I have tried to promote my own posts, and have been denied every single time. 100% of the time I have tried to give Instagram money to show my posts to more people I have been turned down because it was too provocative. Yet Yandy can.
Instagram owns the playground. They can make the rules whatever they want, and we’ll all have to play by them. But they need to be evenly enforced. If they are unable to enforce them evenly, then they need to be reevaluated.
It’s because of this that I have decided to stop posting lingerie photos on Instagram. I’m taking my Instagram in a new direction, I’ll be posting lifestyle stuff only. You’ll always be able to come here to my website, to see lingerie stuff, or become a Patron or subscribe to my OnlyFans.
