Digital Editions
Newsletters
Subscribe
Digital Editions
Newsletters
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Insta’ gratification
blog

Instagram’s new tools prove ‘shadowbanning’ is real—and now artists are trapped

Many users are beginning to wonder if the platform's guidelines have any positive value

Emma Shapiro
1 May 2023
Share
Instagram's Recommendation Guidelines are leading to artists getting stuck in a confusing violation loop

Instagram's Recommendation Guidelines are leading to artists getting stuck in a confusing violation loop

Insta’ gratification

Insta’ gratification is a monthly blog by Aimee Dawson, looking at how the art world and social media collide. Each article tackles a topic around the innovations and challenges that spring up when art enters the digital world.

Recently, Instagram all but admitted to its notorious “shadowban”—where your posts and account are hidden from other users on the app—by allowing creators to see which of their posts violated an ambiguous set of rules called the Recommendation Guidelines.

After years of stumbling in the gaslight, creators with professional accounts can now see which posts are making their viewer count nosedive, their handle invisible, or any number of effects of what Instagram calls being “not recommendable”. There is even an option to appeal decisions—but it doesn’t always work. Following this uncharacteristic transparency from the notorious black box of Instagram, many have begun to doubt the usefulness of these new tools and some have even grown suspicious of their intent.

Of the many questions that are popping up, one regards a dizzying violation loop artists are getting caught in. When content violates Instagram’s recommendation guidelines, creators are notified in their account status. There, they are given the opportunity to delete content that is in violation, ostensibly making their account recommendable again, or they may ask for a review. Requesting a review creates a bulk review of all content that currently offends the recommendation guidelines. Sometimes content originally flagged as offensive disappears from this list, but many creators have then noticed that they are quickly replaced with new violations, even from old posts.

This has perturbed many artists, prompting the questions: how are our accounts being reviewed, by whom, and how often? Some artists are even growing suspicious of Instagram’s motives in suggesting that artists erase more and more content, a scepticism that is not unreasonable given the years of shadowban denial by the platform.

Another concern troubling artists is the recommendation guideline against “content that may be sexually explicit or suggestive”. Instagram’s community guidelines infamously penalise art that includes the human body, something many artists have already learned to adapt to, so as to avoid account and content deletion. The inclusion of this vague language in the recommendation guidelines, however, is disheartening to artists who are obviously still being held to subjective standards. Recently, Instagram has attempted to define what it considers to be “suggestive elements”, all but one of which rely heavily on obvious sexual intent, the remainder being simply described as “poses”. This catch-all term may be used to pull many artists into the aforementioned violation loop, allowing any work with the body, regardless of intent, to be read as “sexually suggestive”.

While transparency from Instagram’s owner Meta is positive, these tools have revealed more concerns than answers for artists. By showing artists outright that their content is being held to vague and subjective standards, and rewarding self-censorship, these new tools may result in the further chilling of artistic expression on the platform. According to the National Coalition Against Censorship, “It’s a clear sign to us that Meta’s platforms are unfriendly to artistic expression, and that they need to bring more artistic perspectives into the creation and enforcement of their guidelines.”

Insta’ gratificationInstagramMediaSocial media
Share
Subscribe to The Art Newspaper’s digital newsletter for your daily digest of essential news, views and analysis from the international art world delivered directly to your inbox.
Newsletter sign-up
Information
About
Contact
Cookie policy
Data protection
Privacy policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Subscription T&Cs
Terms and conditions
Advertise
Sister Papers
Sponsorship policy
Follow us
Instagram
Bluesky
LinkedIn
Facebook
TikTok
YouTube
© The Art Newspaper

Related content

Social mediacomment
12 September 2023

Invisible by numbers: artists must remain vigilant to escape censorship loop created by social media shadowbans

New European regulations have required Instagram to reveal how some artists’ accounts have been deprived of visibility. But fears remain over who has access to the culture-shaping power of social media

Emma Shapiro
Social medianews
16 December 2022

Are you being 'shadowbanned'? Instagram announces new transparency tools that reveal if posts go against guidelines

New functions show if content goes against the social media platform's Recommendation Guidelines that it uses to decide what should be promoted and searchable

Emma Shapiro
Insta’ gratificationblog
4 September 2021

Instagram’s new sensitive content controls: what they could mean for the art world

The photo-sharing app has introduced new opt-out filters that censor the images they see—but most people don't even know they exist

Aimee Dawson
Insta’ gratificationblog
16 September 2020

Secret censorship: what is behind Instagram’s ‘shadowban’ and how can artists fix it?

Everything creatives need to know about the social media platform's so-called "shadowbanning", from how to spot it to how to stop it

Aimee Dawson