By Rushil Pradhan, 20 April, 2020
In October 2019, Instagram held a roundtable meeting at its headquarters in New York City with around 20 well known social media artists, curators, and activists to discuss Instagram’s new censorship policies. The censorship policies had a significant impact on the accounts with a massive following.
Artists and their accounts.
Many artists had their accounts suspended for posting nudity in the form of paintings, photography, or other forms of art on the Instagram app. And some artists had to get their pictures removed or faced denied access. The company policies showed an imbalanced treatment as many accounts got removed whereas some lost all images from their accounts.
Instagram, what started as a picture-sharing app, became a tool for marketing in the previous years. Many artists around the globe use it to advance their careers. Some artists believe that their policies, although pointed towards safety, do not include gender non-conforming artist which directly affects them.
Instagram censorship policies
According to the present Instagram policies, nudity is prohibited in all forms. All the pictures, videos, and digitally-created content that shows sexual intercourse, genitals and female nipples are banned and will be taken off from the forum immediately. No issues will be raised on post-mastectomy pictures or photos where mothers are actively breastfeeding. Sculpture and paintings with any such content are okay to post and will not deviate from the policies.
Artists and Instagram policies
Many artists didn’t like these policies by Instagram, rendering them completely sexist as Marisa Bellani, an artist who had her work removed mainly portraying female nipples while not a single picture of men with the same dimensions are removed. Many protests and campaigns surfaced, the censorship to lift the ban from all the photographs of the naked human body, stating that art has no boundaries and is different from pornography. Many artists rely on these social media handles to showcase their creativity, and their artistic skills and banning it will kill them from their right of freedom to expression.
However Instagram stands strong about its rules against nudity regardless of the criticism it had to face.
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