Recent trending posts on Instagram have proven that there’s a disappointing double standard when it comes to the platform’s community guidelines.
Last night musician Tommy Lee shared a photo of his penis to both Instagram and Facebook and it was left up for around three hours.
Not only that, but “self-help guru” Andrew Tate
has become a hot topic lately for spreading hate speech on social media and it’s beyond alarming.
Vile videos have been doing the rounds of this feral human instructing men to beat women to keep them in line. He also says that men should only date 18-to-19-year-olds because they are supposedly “cleaner” and easier to “make an imprint on”.
Despite the scores of people who reported Tommy’s post, it was active for hours.
And as for Andrew Tate, he has become a viral topic of conversation. Domestic violence campaigners have insisted that he be removed from Instagram for spreading his dangerous views.
In the meantime, Instagram has been quick to remove completely innocuous posts shared by women.
Following Tommy Lee’s shocking post, women have taken to social media to point out the “bullshit double standards” on Instagram.
“So this is still up on Instagram, but any image with women’s nipples is removed in minutes. Double standards,” a photographer wrote on Facebook.
“I posted how frustrating this is, especially for sex workers, on my [Instagram] Story and it got deleted while the post stays up,” a sex worker wrote on Instagram.
One woman pointed out that she couldn’t share a photo of “a chest including nipples of a baby showing signs of respiratory distress for parents to learn what it looks like,” yet Tommy’s dick is fair game.
Instagram’s community guidelines stipulate that it’s working to “foster a positive, diverse community. We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them.”
I’d say Andrew Tate most definitely crossed that boundary ages ago, right?
And as for nudity, the rules state: “We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks.”
Again, Tommy Lee’s post most definitely factors into this and while I’m glad it was taken down eventually, it’s shocking that it was allowed to even go past the point of posting.
It would seem that the are quick to condemn posts shared by women but do not protect users from posts shared by men, no matter how dangerous said posts are to the community.
PEDESTRIAN.TV has reached out to Instagram for a comment.
Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
