This is Not Allowed showcases "unacceptable" photos and videos. Our mission is to create a space that celebrates sex positivity, enables social activism, recognizes legitimate adult businesses, and reclassifies LGBTQ+ content as regular content.
Hey everyone!
Content moderation on our favorite social media apps is important, within moderation. But this moderation often goes too far and has subtle consequences for society. It threatens sex positivity. It disables social activists for counter speech. It financially harms and misattributes legitimate enterprises as objectionable. It misclassifies LGBTQ+ as adult content.
Many have experienced the questionable removal of photos and videos most of us would deem beautiful, artistic, and expressive. In some cases content is reported when the subject’s bodies don’t fit within the conventional definitions of beauty. In some cases women’s nipples aren’t covered or distorted enough. In some cases a dialogue around sexuality is enough to have posts dismantled. The avenues for appeal are limited. We’re forced to express ourselves within the bounds of the puritanical policies of tech giants, or risk having our accounts frozen, and sometimes removed altogether.
We built This Is Not Allowed (aka Tina) as a repository for all the reported, removed, and banned content from our favorite social media platforms. For the artists, dissenters, visionaries, provocateurs, listeners & storytellers who’ve been creating well before the “creator economy”. This site is for you.
Ellie, Lucy, and Julia
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@lucy_mort whos labeling LGBTQ as "adult content" when it has no nudity? Twitter allows full on nudity. of course they'll mark them, remember Instagram, twitter, fb, yt are 13yo+ sites.
@smallder Facebook has classified content such as women kissing (and clothed) as explicit/pornographic content before, and rejects/removes it when you try to do paid advertising. For a long time Google's search algorithm brought up lesbian porn when looking up the term "lesbian" (just lesbian), whether the person was searching for education, resources, or pornography. It changed just over a year ago. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/...
It's not just LGBTQ+ content either. Companies like Hims and Roman can advertise their ED pills on all mainstream platforms while women-centric sexual function products — heck, even ones that are more for straight up *health*, face multiple hurdles just existing on the internet. Here's one such instance where Joylux ultimately got the rare outcome of Facebook reversing their decision, but it's pretty inefficient to have to turn to the press to pressure Facebook just to run a single ad campaign. https://www.mobihealthnews.com/n...
Finally as a cherry on top, just the other day YouTube randomly removed the instructional video my company Lioness made to show users on our own site how the Lioness Vibrator works (SFW just showing how to sync the vibe to the app), so now I can't embed a YouTube video on my own website like the normal people. I guess pelvic floor data and charts are a little too explicit for Google. 😬 Or maybe I should have used an Android phone to sync. 😉
@lucy_mort great idea, would love to be in touch!
Love this initiative. Really need to both destigmatize material that is self-expressive or through its suppression, results in body-shaming... in order to elevate the vapid conversation surrounding social media content moderation.
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@chrismessina You know that there are kids on these platforms? Kids that would not rather see some edgy body 'art' with some chains and nipple piercings and stuff?
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@chrismessina@edinvejzovic accounts can choose to show their content to 18+. Why would the content still be censored in that case? Why do you get to show your nipples and I don't? This makes no sense.
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@chrismessina@edinvejzovic@sophspages You should @theworld for that. Why do you think everyone is on instagram - just so see your and mine nipples? Nope. We can show our nipples at many sites, behance, twitter. But instagram is a social network.
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@edinvejzovic There were no female presenting nipples anywhere on the site. Kids see more on the beach, in movies, and in TV commercials, but let’s stop using children as a smokescreen—what offends YOU about the specific photos shown on TINA?
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@edinvejzovic@coreyward It offends me that I don't want to be desensitised to said nipples because I'm exposed to porn all the time, in other words, I don't want to develop a skewed view and a porn addiction. I want my feed to be porn free.
?makers would love to hear from you all on your mission with this project and any stories you're able to share from your users.
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What a great idea @lucy_mort and team. I have noticed that this moderation has become more and more strict in the last year for Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. We have had multiple accounts shut down, shadow banned and videos pulled. The algorithms will label almost anything with "too much" skin as inappropriate, even if everything is completely covered and the image isn't suggestive.
My company True Naked Yoga struggles with this daily. There seems to be no place for beautiful photos and videos of the human form educational or not. It is either acceptable or it is labeled as porn. There is really no platform for art anymore. And as @lizklinger mentioned forget about trying to advertise for it. Twitter and Reddit used to allow it, but now they don't either. Even mail marketing companies like MailChimp shut us down and will not allow it.
@lizklinger we have also had a completely censored instructional video pulled from YouTube so had to move to Vimeo. Vimeo is one of the few companies that understands art and sex positivity.
Love this and thank you for helping to bring awareness to this censorship and proving a platform for this content to be seen. I can't wait to post some of our removed content to your site.
@tomseverini thanks for your comment! It is really a problem how content like this is shut off from a large majority of business tools. For this project, I couldn’t use my go to image host as they prohibit “pornographic” content.
I predict a market opportunity for erotic inclusive business tools.
Love this concept! As a content creator, it does feel powerless if you don't get recognition for your work because of platform limitations.. this encourages conversation, excited to see how your product grows!
@edinvejzovic indeed, which is why some content is pulled down/censored geographically. Of course, if you visit the TINA website, you're likely getting a North American perspective where nipples are increasingly understood as a normal body part of both male and female human bodies. I understand that other cultures haven't realized this yet. Thus it's unclear if the content presented on TINA would be pulled down in other countries or left up according to local laws, etc.
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@chrismessina Sorry, but that's really insensitive. You're saying like the USA, or some other close tied western culture is this leading - go to, model culture that everyone is striving to? Not everyone is out to 'realise' the same things, things are just the way they are somewhere. For Russia, let's say, you haven't realised it for them. For half of the US heavily divided people, it's not 'realised'. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. The US for say still have to realise guns can be used for not shooting up schools, so they can have fun with that first, then get to the heavier stuff.
@edinvejzovic@chrismessina Well i'm pretty sure you are from Croatia where 1/4 boys and 1/6 girls reported they had sex before 16. https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/43345
But then again may be it's just that your family name is croatian and you are actually from Mars.
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@chrismessina@blagochevsky Sorry but no. I'm from the neighboring country of Bosnia, with a one third muslim population, and two thirds of orthodox and catholic, some are pretty serious about religion, which don't want their kids exposed to that stuff all the time.
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