- Instagram mistakenly blocked LGBTQ-related content from teenage users.
- This was a result of misclassified search terms and has been addressed now.
- This incident comes amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement to relax censorship and restrictions on Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram has become a cultural pool of people around the world. Users from all walks of life share and engage with said content on the platform. That even includes content related to LGBTQ communities. But recently, Instagram came under fire for blocking teen users trying to interact with LGBTQ and other inclusive groups by accident.
According to UserMag, posts containing LGBTQ hashtags were being hidden from teenage users. These included hashtags such as #lesbian, #bisexual, #gay, #trans, #queer, #nonbinary, #Tgirlsarebeautiful, and #lesbianpride. It would show a blank page when searching for said words, and a link to review the “Sensitive content” policy.
This policy blocks any suggestive or sexually explicit content from showing up in the feeds of teenagers. But this is indeed not the case. Meta reversed these restrictions when UserMag reached out to the platform’s parent company. They chalked up the reason behind this mistake Meta was because the technology that helps to limit sensitive content to younger demographics misclassified several LGBTQ+ terms.
They even shared a statement clarifying, “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” further adding “It’s important to us that all communities feel safe and welcome on Meta apps, and we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policies”, a Meta spokesperson said.
Just last year, Meta introduced their new sensitive content restrictions as a response to pressure from lawmakers regarding the panic around social media usage of the younger generation. This removed and restricted even more content from coming across the teen demographics. However, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened with Instagram.
According to Mashable, Instagram has received complaints from LGBTQ creators that the app has shadowbanned their content. Even though their content doesn’t violate any platform policies.
This news comes hot on the heels of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest move to trim down the restrictions and censorship on both Facebook and Instagram. So we should see more loose restrictions regarding censorship, and explicit content on both the services in the coming days. But what are your thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the comments section below.
