Although I think moderation on Instagram and Facebook is excessive, I don’t complain often. I realize that I’m not their customer. The advertisers are the customers. I’m just the free product. By joining the platform I acknowledge that they can remove whatever they want, but that’s a hard pill to swallow when Meta is the only real game in town. Facebook and Instagram are really the only ways I can communicate effectively with a broad audience. I could post to other sites, but the platforms that would allow my content just can’t compete against Meta’s resources.
My Instagram account has had restrictions for well over a year and is almost never seen by non-followers even though I feel that I post within the guidelines. I’m even more careful posting on Facebook, but recently they threatened to restrict my account if I didn’t remove ten posts that were going against community standards. This time, they’ve just gone too far. Although I will admit that a few are sexually suggestive, I don’t think it’s anything that you wouldn’t see in mainstream media and in some of them the models are fully clothed. Here are the posts I had to remove:
UPDATE: Recently on Instagram, I had additional restrictions placed on my account for sharing another user’s post in my stories. It didn’t seem to affect the account of the user who posted. Why would they penalize me for sharing it? I’m starting to take this all very personally. I think I’ll limit my efforts on Instagram.
I’ve set up an account on BlueSky, it seems like a much better platform than Instagram and it’s been growing incredibly fast adding about a million users per day. I’ll able to post my fine art nude work there without getting banned. Follow me there and I’ll be sure to give you a follow back.
UPDATE: It’s been six months since I wrote this post. BlueSky never really took off. It seemed like I had all restrictions lifted from my account for a at least a few weeks in the spring. But in the past month I’ve had to remove another whack of images from Facebook and a smaller number from Instagram even though I’m trying to be more conservative. I came across this older article in the Guardian that sheds some insight on the issue. It’s worth the read.