On Tuesday, 20 July 2021 around 7 PM BST, my profile was deleted by Instagram. I’m an online moderation researcher, activist, blogger, writer, survivor and pole dance instructor researching on and campaigning online censorship. And yet, even though I have…
Where does pole dancing come from and what is its history? These simple questions often turn pole dance Facebook groups and conversations among pole dancers into a culture war. In this blog post, I use multiple sources to trace the…
Policies on shadowbanning, visibility and content recommendation have been clarified by Instagram both in a recent post and in my recent communication with the policy team. This post sheds some light on those policies, questioning some of their elements and…
After Instagram announced updates to their Terms of Use in November 2020, a petition I started with a variety of accounts posting content related to nudity, sexuality and performance was signed by over 100,000 people. As a result of the…
My experience on TikTok is yet another example of why social media users have very little rights. This should worry us all.
In my first interview of 2021, I speak with leading social media expert – and former uni classmate – Unsah Malik. Unsah’s SLASHED IT eBook and the advice it shared massively helped me grow my following and launch the petition…
Something must be happening on body-positive and sex-positive Instagram. In the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing a lot of people in my network – pole dancers, sex workers, sex educators, performers and so on – post about someone impersonating…
Following the #BlackLivesMatter protests, Instagram have pledged to do better to promote diversity on their platform, making big promises for change. In doing so, they obliquely admitted algorithm bias exists on the platform (something they hadn’t done so far). Following…
With the Coronavirus pandemic forcing a large portion of workers online, having a voice and being visible on the Internet is essential towards still being able to work. For people in the pole dance, fitness, modeling, art, sex education, sex…
Life is on hold due to Coronavirus – and so is activism. In this very personal post, I talk about my experience as an activist and about how the campaigning front going quiet has been affecting me. Aaaand I’ll finally…
