On 29 October 2019 – World Internet Day – a coalition of artists, sex workers, pole dancers, educators, athletes, performers and more that I am part of launched #EveryBODYVisible, a campaign to fight Instagram censorship, demand clarity about content moderation from the platform and change its approach to nudity. This post is an insider’s view on the campaign as well as an academic’s view on what it teaches us.

What Is #EveryBodyVisible and Who Is Behind It?

#EveryBODYVisible is the campaign and hashtag created by the group that obtained an apology from Instagram over the summer, after the platform censored pole dancing hashtags “in error”. If you read this blog, you’ll know yours truly teamed up with a star-studded group of pole dancers to get answers, but all we got was a PR-churned apology.

That group decided the apology wasn’t enough, so we started working on a bigger campaign showcasing all women and minorities who were censored by Instagram. That campaign became #EveryBODYVisible, and this is our team so far:

Logo by Phil Earley

What Is The Instagram Shadowban?

The Shadowban is Instagram’s “light” censorship, removing your posts from the Explore page and from the “recent” tab, restricting their views because they go “against community guidelines”. Essentially, the platform is judging what’s inappropriate in its own way, without informing users how and why, making its own laws. Here’s everything I’ve ever written about it:

#EveryBodyVisible: Behind The Scenes

Since we shared the news about Instagram’s apology in August, the #EveryBODYVisible team began working on a press release, on a key set of demands, on a hashtag to choose and on recruiting allies.

From the East London Strippers’ Collective to artist Spencer Tunick, from pole dancers to yogis and accounts all over the world, #EveryBODYVisible gathered a huge response from allies – and from the media. Already before our launch, we were on NBC and ABC‘s sites, and many more.

On October 29, Michelle Shimmy was one of the first people in our network to post with the #EveryBODYVisible hashtag. Star pole dancers all over Australia followed, and when Europe woke up the morning after we all took to Instagram to protest.

Until lunchtime that is – when it came out that Instagram had shadowbanned the #EveryBODYVisible hashtag.

What Does Instagram’s Censorship of #EveryBODYVisble Mean?

Because as an academic I can’t do things without going on a sociological mindfuck, here are three things that the #EveryBODYVisible censorship at the hands of IG tell us about the state of social media today.

Monopolies Are Bad

I know what you’re thinking. “You’ve done an anti-Instagram censoring campaign ON Instagram? And you got censored by Instagram? LOL”.

LOL, indeed. But think about it: where else would you have posted this campaign? Twitter has been losing users for ages, and Instagram is without doubt the biggest growing social media platform we have at the moment that engages all sort of people. It just happens to be owned by Facebook – like WhatsApp.

Facebook’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp basically means that Zuck and friends have a monopoly over social media content, and because their legal responsibilities are still quite murky – if we exclude FOSTA/SESTA – they have the power to demote whatever they want. Looks like what they want is women, minorities, nudity – but hate speech and alt-right propaganda are fine.

So yeah. Where else can we do a big social media campaign if not on Instagram? The fact that they can decide to censor us like they have is part of the problem.

What is happening at the moment is that the power of the Internet resides in the hands of Facebook, Google and Twitter. And that everyone, one day or another, can be censored if you don’t conform to their idea of propriety. What we wanted to do was shine a light on that – and it looks like we did.

Leaving AI Completely In Charge Of Speech / Content Is Dangerous

In World Without Mind, author Franklin Foer writes that algorithms are “invisibilia” – nobody, maybe not even platforms themselves, have a full grasp of how they work. Algorithms are trained by people, but unlike people they don’t do nuance and context.

In Speech Police, the UN’s Special Rapporteur For Freedom of Speech David Kaye warns of the risk of leaving moderation of public interest content to algorithms. In the past, AI has censored war videos published by activists or by news organisations – videos that were crucial in spreading the news about living and political conditions in certain states.

What does it mean for our democracy if a handful of platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google – get to regulate what’s ok and what’s not according to their own, platform-specific community guidelines? Debate will be impoverished, censorship will be rife, people will not learn about different views or experiences. That’s what happens.

Users and Governments Need To Demand More Responsibility From Social Media Companies

Of course policing the Internet is something no one wants to do. But if Instagram’s censorship of women, minorities and of #EveryBODYVisible is anything to go by… will we keep seeing stories about dissent? Will we keep seeing stories that question how social media platforms work?

It’s time that governments demand clarity from social media platforms about how they work, and it’s time these platforms implemented international human rights law more strongly in their moderation techniques. The Internet can’t be a no man’s land where three tech giants decide what’s appropriate or not. This is not what social media were meant to do: give people a platform. Yet, increasingly, social media are becoming more of a cash cow for businesses and less of a platform for the public. It’s in everyone’s interest to start regulating them so that people aren’t censored unfairly.

What’s Next For #EveryBODYVisible?

We will continue campaigning, obvs. In fact, the more of us there are, the better – take action here.

At some point on Tuesday, Instagram blocked #EveryBODYVisible from commenting or liking any posts – we don’t know if this was intentional or if the platform perceived our actions as spam. The profile even crashed for a short while – once again, we don’t know if it’s due to silencing or because of so much interaction from all the people tagging and reposting us.

I have also reached out to Instagram to see whether they want to comment, but haven’t heard from them yet. Will keep you posted.

What this all shows, mainly, is that the protest was a success. Instagram won’t change overnight, but we’ve raised awareness of an issue that touches much more than just pole dancers. Instagram’s censorship of our content means we’re ruffling some feathers – and that, to me, is doing something right.

When I woke up this morning I saw that the reason why I started performing – burlesque legend Dita Von Teese – posted about us too. Dita is what attracted me to on-stage nakedness in the first place, and the reason why I spent my scholarship money on underwear as a teen. I am humbled, moved and just… speechless that she would join our campaign.

Also, try and look at the last posts in which Sheryl Sandberg has been tagged. Weird what a bunch of naked people can do, uh?

Over and out for now.

Update: 31 October 2019

In an Instagram story, the Head of IG Adam Mosseri acknowledged our demands as reasonable. EveryBODYVisible is still talking to media and going through everyone’s posts – thanks for taking part!

Watch My YouTube Video Explaining The Shadowban

Like this: Like Loading...