CENSORSHIP

Because of my work with the nude human body, I have struggled with censorship on social media platforms for many years. This is an ongoing activist project documenting my struggles and the struggles of other artists. I have also been acting as a liaison between censored artists and policy makers at Facebook/Instagram, helping people restore their individual posts or accounts. In October 2019, I helped organize a summit meeting with people from the art world to speak with the policy team at Instagram’s headquarters to discuss issues of nudity in art and censorship on both platforms.

In 2017 I wrote a petition on change.org asking Facebook and Instagram to re-evaluate their Community Standards.

Other artists shared their censorship experiences online and I archived them here: ArtistsAgainstCensorship.com.

My own work started to evolve using bodily composition and materials to experiment with Instagram’s algorithm. The images on the left were removed from Instagram and the images on the right tricked the algorithm and were allowed to remain.

About a year after I wrote the petition, someone from the Facebook/Instagram policy team emailed me. I began consulting for them regarding nudity in art and photography. I was able to view charts, tables and images they considered “fine art” vs “pornography.” We discussed revenge porn and consent. We discussed context heavily. I learned how they created their Community Standards and how they flag and remove images using a combination of artificial intelligence and human moderators. They also use “shadowbanning” as a tool, as a warning or slap on the wrist. If you are shadowbanned on Instagram, your content will not appear in users’ feeds.

Through word-of-mouth, I began acting as a liaison between censored artists and Facebook/Instagram policy-makers. In October 2019, an Art Community Roundtable was held at Instagram headquarters in Manhattan. People from the Facebook/Instagram policy team were there, as well as representatives from art museums, gallery curators, and emerging and established artists. There has been some progress: the policy team has included individual posts, images and videos in the appeal process, providing users with a (vague) explanation and cite which post and guideline has been violated. There has been no movement on the distinction between fine art photography and pornography or allowing users to contact an actual person, unless they know about my connection.