Content dominates our social media feeds, while the process of making, sharing and critiquing it is central to many people’s work and personal lives. As a platform governance scholar specialising in the creator economy, a content creator and a culture…
Social media can be invaluable resources for pole dancers, connecting us with fellow polers all over the world, providing inspiration and helping us promote our work. But social media can also be draining, disheartening spaces of self-doubt, censorship and comparison.…
Reels: love them or hate them, we’re gonna be stuck with them. A worldwide backlash has followed Instagram’s latest update, which pursued a video-first, TikTok-like strategy by prioritising reels more than its historic, culture-defining pictures. And people are pissed –…
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…
