If he shows them, that’s fine. If she shows them, they are sexually explicit content. But now something could change. According to the independent supervisory commission of Meta, the company that controls Facebook and Instagram, the censorship of images showing nipples and breasts is a “discrimination against the emancipation battles of women, transgender, intersex and non-binary people”.
So the commission made up of academics, politicians and journalists asked the leaders of Meta to change the rules governing nudity, accepting the requests of the international #FreetheNipple movement after more than ten years of battles. The group of experts therefore recommended that Meta “define clear, objective and respectful of rights criteria”, “so that all people are treated consistently”. Now the company has sixty days to make a decision.
The international #FreetheNipple movement
The campaign born and proliferated on American university campuses has been supported over the years by Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and Lena Dunham, among others. In 2015, Los Angeles-based artist Micol Hebron created stickers of male nipples — which have always been allowed on Instagram — so female Instagrammers could overlay them on their own.
The problem of content moderation
However, a significant problem remains, namely entrusting the automated content moderation systems with distinguishing between a topless post and pornographic content. “Context is everything, and algorithms are terrible at analyzing context,” she told Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, in an interview on Guardian -. The interesting question is how Meta can create new rules without opening the door to porn, which is why these rules exist. It should be possible, but I’m skeptical that it really is if content moderation remains automated.”