My friend @thomasfabbri pointed me to this @algorithmwatch study. Here's why I think that saying Instagram favours nudity is incorrect, given my own research on the #shadowban & algorithm bias. algorithmwatch.org/en/story/insta… 1/
Given my own experience and autoethnography of the shadowban [more to come in a forthcoming paper + blogs], and as someone who mainly follows half-naked womxn and people (hello, lovely pole family), I often see more cats than I do #poledancers, even if I willingly follow butts 2/
Particularly after FOSTA/SESTA, a variety of people - sex workers, pole dancers, athletes, sex educators etc - have found that their bodies were excessively moderated by FB/IG. [More info in this post & next tweet] bloggeronpole.com/2019/07/what-i… 3/
In my own and my community's experience, the algorithm hides rather than promotes female bodies. The study doesn't seem to consider caption, hashtags (a major factor in the #shadowban) or surrounding circumstances. bloggeronpole.com/2019/07/instag… 5/
From what can be read in the study, the participants didn't want to be named for FEAR OF the shadowban. They didn't choose to post naked pics because they feared little engagement. The idea of being forced to post bikini pictures seems to only be in the researchers' heads 6/
Especially at a time when womxn and other communities are struggling to keep their bodies online and to be visible, a study like this undermines their efforts, risking to make social media take an even more conservative turn. 7/
This is due to FB/IG's "borderline" content policy, where content that borders the line of acceptability is hidden. facebook.com/notes/mark-zuc… 4/
Point 4 in this thread seems to have disappeared so here it is - it was about FB/IG's "borderline" content policy, where content that borders the line of acceptability is hidden. facebook.com/notes/mark-zuc… 4/
