Following a decision by parent company Meta’s oversight board, Instagram and Facebook have been urged to end their censorship of bare breasts and chests for all genders.
According to The Guardian, the panel of academics, politicians, and journalists overruled Instagram’s decision to delete a post featuring a transgender and non-binary pair whose identities must now be kept confidential owing to the participation of the oversight board.
The photos showed the pair topless but with their nipples covered, with messages about trans healthcare and raising money for top surgery.
In addition to overturning the removal of the post, the board suggested that Meta update its present censoring procedures, such that it is guided by explicit criteria that satisfy international human rights norms.
According to the research, Meta’s ‘Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity Community Standard,’ prohibits photographs displaying female nipples, except in only certain circumstances, such as nursing and gender confirmation surgery, and is thus predicated on a binary understanding of gender.
The report says,
Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale
Moreover the report adds,
The Board finds that Meta’s policies on adult nudity result in greater barriers to expression for women, trans, and gender non-binary people. For example, they have a severe impact in contexts where women traditionally go bare-chested and people who identify as LGBTQI+ can be disproportionately affected.
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