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That said, when thinking about nipple censorship on social media today, it’s worth getting to the bare bones of the matter, which is this: there is simply no way of knowing a person’s gender based on what their body looks like – full stop. And, even if that were possible, or even remotely ethical to police (it’s not), there is no reason that a woman’s breast ought to be inherently offensive, when a man’s chest isn’t. When we consider those two things in tandem, Instagram’s adult nudity policy begins to look not only misogynistic and transphobic, but also genuinely absurd. Take a trans woman, for example, who hasn’t had breast augmentation. Is she expected to blur her nipples out the moment she legally gains gender recognition? Or does the censorship only apply post-surgery, once deemed “woman enough” by the AI censors?
Meta isn’t the only company backtracking on outdated censorship rules. In November last year, Tumblr announced that it would be allowing nudity again, including freeing the nipple. Though the platform had a thriving NSFW community in its mid-2010s heyday, its 2018 ban on adult content caused a mass exodus from the platform, leading to a 30 per cent drop in monthly page views. It didn’t help that users widely reported that Tumblr’s “Safe Mode” filter was not only censoring adult content, but also flagging non-explicit and LGBTQIA+ artwork that didn’t contain anything sexual (because guess what? AI censorship doesn’t work). Sure, they’ve since backtracked, but for many, it was too little, too late. And though Tumblr may be on the brink of a comeback, it’s hardly the LGBTQIA+ mecca that it once was, or had the potential to be.
It’s worth pointing out here that many of these “adult nudity” bans don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re a reflection of real-life norms in the Western world. If I were to go outside topless, there’s a high chance I’d be arrested. If a guy was to leave the house with his top off, nobody would bat an eyelid. These are centuries-old social conventions that position men as observers, and women as the observed, with no room for gender variation. It’s about much more than “letting women be topless”. It’s about the idea that a topless woman can only ever be two things: sexual, or not sexual enough, and therefore distasteful. Whereas a topless man can just exist. And it will take more than the overturning of a nipple ban to overhaul that view, and the whole binary gender-based system that upholds it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not a start. And though Meta has yet to actually implement these changes in a real, tangible way – they have 60 days to respond publicly to the board’s recommendations – it’s encouraging to see conversations surrounding body autonomy, and the negative ways in which automated systems can affect marginalised bodies, being centred in the public eye.
Still, the ways in which Meta will be able to uphold a porn ban without upholding a nudity ban in fair and unharmful ways remains to be seen. We’ve already witnessed how artificial intelligence can make mistakes or uphold biases, often at the detriment of marginalised groups. These mistakes arguably can’t be rectified by simply “fixing” the technology (how?), or tweaking the criteria (in which ways?). Meta now has a chance to properly dismantle a system that was flawed from the offset. Only time will tell whether they actually choose to take it.
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