Instagram is not a service that I use, nor one that I would normally cover on ErosBlog. It’s always been a #pornocalypse social media platform, like Facebook, with adult-unfriendly, porn-hostile terms of service (TOS). My whole pornocalypse shtick is that it eventually “comes for us all” — by which I mean that every porn-friendly social-media service eventually changes the rules and throws all us stinky-porn adult-industry people out. But how can it be the pornocalypse if we were never welcome? How can it be the pornocalypse if the TOS always said our stuff shouldn’t be there in the first place?
In the case of Instagram, though…
Instagram was something of a hybrid. They weren’t porn-friendly, but they used to allow quite a lot of risque material. The TOS were vaguely disapproving, but in actual practice you could get away with quite a lot. I never bothered, because I hate getting thrown out of places and not being able to bitch because I was technically never welcome in the first place. But lots of adult performers and sex industry people went hog-wild and built businesses and public followings on the platform.
Of course it had to end in tears. The #pornocalypse comes for us all. I’m not in a position to talk about the details because I was never on the platform. But Gustavo Turner at XBIZ has written a ludicrously detailed, thoroughly excellent piece of investigative reporting. Incredibly, he’s gotten way more detail out of Facebook and Instagram spokespeople than you would expect. Pay particular attention to the interplay between their comments, their denials, and their “no comments” — the picture painted by the differences is very telling.
The article is Instagram and the War On Porn: An XBIZ Explainer. It’s long, it’s good, it’s worth your time. It’s better than anything I’ve ever written on this stuff, and I’m proud of my coverage over the years. But I am not a journalist; I can’t get these people to talk to me, even when I try, which is not often. Gustavo is, and he can.
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