Artist Micol Hebron's Instagram Account Suspended Shortly After FB Censorship Meeting
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Digital collage by Micol Hebron (all photos courtesy of Micol Hebron)
A group of about 20 artists, curators, and activists met Monday afternoon at Facebook and Instagram’s New York City office. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss Instagram’s treatment of artists and its impact on their art and livelihoods.
Interdisciplinary artist, curator, and associate professor at Chapman University in Southern California, Micol Hebron has an extensive history of campaigning to free womens’ nipples. Fellow artist Joann Leah was in attendance as an essential bridge between Facebook and artists, having established long-standing relationships with the organization over its censorship of artwork, writes Hyperallergic.
To Hebron, the policy — and perhaps Facebook’s overall approach to gender — lacks nuance.
“The policies that Facebook enacts are essentially policing the bodies and the identities of the users — and are a particular problem who people who are queer or trans … that is my primary concern from the beginning. How does an algorithm know what someone’s gender is? How does a person know what gender someone is by looking at their nipples?”
“Artists that are working with the nude, who censor their own works on Instagram in order to meet their community standards, can be deleted with no recourse because of a lack of a proper appeals system,” Spencer Tunick told Hyperallergic. “The deletion of an artist’s account is like throwing someone’s address book and portfolio into a fire.”
In a note of irony, three hours after the Facebook meeting ended, Hebron’s Instagram account was suspended for posting the image of her and Tunick below, as they prepared to enter the meeting. Being connected at Instagram, Hebron was able to solve her suspension in short order.
For relatively unknown and unconnected artists, the process is far more complicated and potentially career-defining in today’s Insta-world, Hebron acknowledged.
