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Women Users ‘Gender-Swap’ to Evade Insta’s Sexist Shadowbans
Posted On 21 Nov 2019
Instagram users, including members of the adult industry, attempting to understand what they are (and are not) permitted to post on the platform won’t find much in terms of clear guidelines. This is a significant source of frustration for users from many occupational areas, as people find themselves banned for innocuous posts while others’ accounts, awash with belfies and other sorts of suggestive posts, remain in good standing.
Is it surprising then that people are trying to game the system?
Finding ways to trick Instagram has been happening, probably, since about three minutes after the platform launched. (Recall attempts to hide adult content under seemingly unrelated hashtags — #eggplant, how quaint!) Today, tricking Instagram includes women, who are more frequently targeted by vague, sexist content standards, pretending to be men on the platform. At least, this is what a recent write up on HuffPo speculates.
A recent piece by Jesselyn Cook, “Women Are Pretending To Be Men On Instagram To Avoid Sexist Censorship,” asserts that shadowbanning “vaguely ‘inappropriate’” content has disproportionately affected “female” users and accountholders.
Cook wrote, “Female pole dancers, fitness instructors and sex workers who use Instagram have started changing their gender to male on the app. The widespread deception is in response to a sexist policy the tech giant introduced earlier this year.”
As we know, back in April, Instagram began hiding photos and videos that it considered to be “vaguely inappropriate,” without explaining what specific kind of content that includes. Such “vaguely inappropriate” posts are then algorithmically blocked – or, shadowbanned. This effectively quashes users’ attempts to grow individual accounts on a per-post basis by preventing said posts from having broader exposure. To add insult to injury, Instagram wasn’t letting account holders know that their particular posts were in violation. It was up to the user to discover it.
Now what’s happening, according to Cook (her conflation and confusion of terms related to sex and gender aside), is that women were being targeted by shadowbanning practices and procedures. As a consequence, they started taking the lady piece out of the algorithm — by identifying themselves to the platform as men.
Cook recounted the experiences of Michelle, a pole dancer, teacher and studio owner in Australia.
“Many of us within the pole dancing community rely on Instagram to thrive,” Michelle told HuffPo. “We use [Instagram] to share training videos, connect with new people and, for lots of us, to grow our businesses.”
In late October, after watching her engagement decline for months, Michelle decided to change her profile to identify her as a man. Shockingly (yet, not really that shocking, actually), within three days of switching, Michelle said things went back to their previous state.
“It’s ridiculous that we have to resort to trying this kind of thing,” Michelle said to HuffPo — and she’s not the only person resorting to gender-swapping on Instagram.
Recent signal boosting from anti-censorship activism pages like @everybodyvisible has prompted others to start gender-swapping too. And, like Michelle, several other women have reported positive changes to their content’s performance since declaring themselves to be men within the Insta-verse.
In a statement to HuffPo, a spokesperson from Instagram-owner Facebook denied that the platform is biased against women.
“Gender information from profiles has no impact on content we filter from hashtags or the Explore page,” HuffPo reported the spokesperson stating. “We want to make sure the content we recommend to people on Instagram is safe and appropriate for everyone. Ensuring women feel heard is an essential part of that effort.”
Fine. Except that most standards of propriety, including sanctions against nudity and sexual displays in general, are themselves sexist and target women. So, even if what the spokesperson says is true of Instagram’s policy, the fact remains that, by default, virtually all policies of this nature target women.
Consider, for instance, tumblr’s declaration against “female-presenting nipples.” Variable standards outlining nipple exposure are based strictly on the body said nipples are attached to and are, thus, inherently sexist.
So, gender-swap your Insta identify to your heart’s content, people! The platform probably would break if someone attempted to flag a post featuring a man’s side boob or nip slip. It makes me wonder what will start happening in terms of men sex workers and social media targeting, though.
Image by Sabel Blanco via Pexels.
