Coloring Outside the Lines: Defying Instagram's Censorship Through Moderation
I was going to try my hand at writing a sort of essay about how essential the symbiosis between an artist and a model is for the practice of art, and for the history of art, but I decided to ditch the formality and put it in my own words because I want this to communicate my thoughts as they come out.
I don’t think I need to explain how important it is for figurative artists to study and practice human anatomy, since a really long time ago, live drawing with model has been available as a tool aimed to fine tune the observation skills required to learn something as enormously complex as drawing the human figure, it is only through hundreds of hours of trial and dedicated practice that you’re able to understand, overcome and develop your language, vision and personal style. The bond between artist and model is critical for this, it cannot be broken.
And it’s also thanks to this symbiotic artist-model relationship that we are able to enjoy some of the most inspiring and beautiful masterpieces ever created: Lucian Freud’s nude paintings, Goya’s “Naked maja”, Michaelangelo’s “David”, Klimt’s artworks, Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus”, Schiele, Picasso… I could extend myself for lines without an end just naming Artists and artwork that depicts the beauty of the naked human body as a way to tell a visual story.
Meta (Instagram’s parent company) in an effort to curve down the proliferation of objectionable content, has developed a moderation framework that is extremely aggressive in the way it enforces it’s community guidelines, their developers defend it as the only way they have to keep control of the content that is shared in the app, and I agree that it must be really difficult to design a moderation model that is efficient, effective and fair while also financially coherent, however I really question the effectiveness of the current model.
I’ve seen a lot of figurative artists throughout the entire spectrum of the practice: from amateurs to professionals fall victim to Instagram’s moderation, and this is even worse for models, they have to keep opening backup accounts because they their accounts get often suspended and ultimately removed because of the content they share. The extent of aggressiveness of Instagram’s moderation is very frustrating for both artists and models, when Meta purchased (sadly, I might add) Instagram, they turned it into almost a drug, and during the pandemic it became essential for the survival of artists, which mostly lost the ability to show in galleries for a long extent of time, they moved out from the original chronological timeline, to an algorithm model that rewards certain content, but also has the ability to punish other content, and the model is very simple actually, it has to do with how much engagement (views, likes, comments, shares etc) your publication can get. This model, however, has the disadvantage of being an easy target of people who amass large amounts of engagement by posting questionable content that feeds off from human curiosity. Which makes essential the need for expanded moderation, in my opinion a chronological feed wouldn’t have this drawback, because there wouldn’t be a reward for this type of content hence the moderation would not need to be that aggressive.
In my personal opinion there doesn’t seem to be any improvement if at all in the regards of safety of content within the platform, objectionable content is easily available and even promoted, while artists and models get their content aggressively taken down and their accounts hit with extreme punishment to the detriment of their practice, the search feed will gladly offer a never ending stream of content creators in outfits that leave very little if anything to the imagination, violence and other questionable content should you be too curious in your browsing through the search, scammers also run wild on the platform, you get at least 1 daily offer of purchasing your art through NFTs or other types of scams in your direct messages, which makes offering and selling your art on Instagram a very risky operation in which you have to be wary of the legitimacy of the buyer, and 9 out of 10 times the offer is actually a scam. Users that report scams often find out through an automated message that Instagram doesn’t have sufficient evidence to prosecute the offender and ends up taking no action, leaving the scammer ready to bait another victim.
As an immigrant artist whose practice and journey does not align with what galleries often look for, Instagram allowed me to have the opportunity to share my artwork with a wider audience, and build a following for my art, it allowed me the ability to reach far beyond my current location and be available to find for art enthusiasts from places that I would never even dream of reaching without it, it gave me a second chance at making art, 4 years ago I was ready to sell all of my art tools, dispose of all of my earlier artwork and focus on my full-time job outside of art, and forget about it, but I was able to use instagram to connect to other artists, be part of a community and find the confidence and support I needed to start building my artistic practice, and was able to successfully build and maintain a moderately successful account.
Yesterday, as I posted a piece of art I made that depicted the partially naked buttocks of a model I often collaborate with, that was beginning to gain traction, I got almost immediately flagged by the moderation tool, and I was placed in what people call “A shadowban” Instagram informed me that my content could not be shared with people that doesn’t follow me, the part they don’t say is that apart from this punishment, they also throttle down the reach that you can get even to accounts that follow you, and that when people search for your name, your account handle will not be suggested unless they type the entire handle in the search bar.
I know this because this isn’t the first time it happens to me, before I started posting content with nudity, my posts would get at least 4 times the amount of reach that my current posts are getting, after the first time I got caught by Instagrams moderation, my account was affected for a long time, unknowingly to me because they don’t tell you directly, they hide their moderation enforcement notices between layers of menus that aren’t easy to find, some people go entire months without knowing they have artwork that has been caught by Instagrams moderation, and are left wondering why their accounts are failing. when this happened to me, I had to take the step to remove the “offending” content because no matter how many times I appealed and won the appeal, every time I posted I would immediately get flagged, and the content that was previously cleared, would again be put into question, which would get me into a neverending posting - shadowban - appeal loop to the detriment of my account. My account never recovered and my numbers took a deep dive from which they would never come up again
I purchased the verified badge as a last minute resource to see if this would somehow help me, either be less likely to get moderated, or, in case of being flagged get access to their customer service team so I could get my appeal expedited, taking into account engagement speed is a factor that the algorithm uses to rank your content, time is essential. It’s been 14 hours since I posted and my appeal is still unanswered, I contacted Instagram verified program customer service chat and their only help was to offer me a few words of encouragement while I wait for something or someone to review my appeal, in the meantime my account is shadowbanned and my badge absolutely worthless.
I offer this absurdly long text to you, so I can share my experience if you ever thought about getting into the verified program to somehow “beat the algorithm” or gain leverage over their moderation, and my takeaway is: don’t waste your money, after almost 6 months of being in this program my account never went back to the days pre-moderation, and the badge will not shield you from getting aggressively flagged nor will get your case considered promptly. If this is important to you, I would encourage you to put your money elsewhere.
The first time this happened to me, as I said earlier, I ended up caving in and removing the content they didn’t like in hopes I could gain back what I lost, which never happened, and actually made the models whose work I removed very sad, and I felt terrible for it. I promise I won’t self-censor or remove my content, whatever happens, so be it, the content will be there and if Instagram thinks I should be purged from their app because of my drawings (even though my drawings fall within the acceptable parameters set by their Community Guidelines) that is fine. I will focus on putting my content in my website and other platforms I can find where my content is allowed, I will continue posting and using instagram for as far as I’m allowed, but will deprioritize it.
Thank you for getting this far, if you did, I will open up a blog in my website, and this is probably going to become my first post in that blog, if you’re interested in following my journey through art I encourage you to visit my website (www.camilocarreno.com) and put my blog in your reader feed (once it goes up) too keep up to date with my practice, I’m being a lot better about updating it, and you will find images of a better quality than Instagram allows.
Huge love to you dear reader and thank you kindly for supporting my practice.
Love,
C.
