Wow. I'm very involved in LGBTQ, sex positive and poly communities and locally and I have to say I hadn't noticed this yet. For IM we mainly use telegram, not WhatsApp, but Instagram is used the most as a social network, by far. "What's your Insta" is a standard line when you meet someone at a party. But everything is small scale and not big enough to be on the global radar.

It does mean that people will see more and more bans now when they are reported by haters. I guess it's time for a new common social media network. But which? It'll be hard to get traction for fediverse networks in such a diverse and non technical community.

I don't really understand why though. I understand they're against LGBTQ for religious reasons or something but why try to ban it? They can just like... not follow the content they don't like? The algorithm does the rest. And the content on insta is already very mild. No nudity etc.

▲

parineum 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect this is a big bag of nothing.

Members of any social activists groups seem likely to me to be of the more forceful vocal type and abortion and "queer groups" (that seems crazy broad to me) are two categories that particularly attract people with strong feelings.

It's not surprising to me that people in those groups would get banned more than others, especially the queer one because the topic of the group is explicitly sexual and I could see their posts more often crossing the ban line.

Now if all members of those groups are getting banned, that's surprising but I doubt there's anything malicious here (unless you consider their general content policy malicious).

▲

wkat4242 4 days ago | parent [-]

We're not 'activists' or so. Often conservatives claim we have a 'queer agenda' or like to turn their kids trans, but we don't care about that. We aren't organised, we just want to be as we are in society. That does include wearing pride flags but not as a means of some kind of mind control, just like an identity. The same way people wear crosses around their neck or fly national flags at their house, because they care about those things. We're not very activistic as we're all in Europe and we don't need to campaign for our rights (yet).

On insta we just want to communicate and organise parties together. Behind closed doors where were yes, we often do freaky (yet consensual) things to each other ;) But the photos will not end up on insta as we obey the policy. In fact these events have very strict no-camera rules anyway.

It's always been a bit difficult and most people create several 'backup' accounts already that people can follow in advance in case they get banned. Sometimes that's justified according to the policy, usually it's not. The moderation policies have always been a bit erratic with instagram, even worse since they fired all of their moderators last year and moved a lot of it to AI.

	▲	parineum 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm specifically not talking about everyone in these groups. I'm talking about the vocal minority of any group that also exists in these communities. The bans don't appear to be targeting these groups otherwise the groups would be empty. Instead, it appears that the bans are toward a subset of the groups. My speculation is that, due to the nature of the groups (sexuality and abortion), it seems very reasonable to me to expect that the more vocal members of the groups might post content that is against Facebook guidelines. So when you say "we", I'm not sure who you're referring to because I'm likely not talking about you. > Sometimes that's justified according to the policy, usually it's not. Says everyone who's ever been banned from anywhere. If people are often getting banned amd don't change their behavior, they'll probably continue to be banned on their alts, especially since alts to avoid bams are usually a banable offense itself. Facebook's policies are probably stupid, I don't know, but they are their policies and if someone can't figure out what crosses the line after multiple bans, I think that's on them. If you don't like their policies, there are a lot of other places to go rather than creating a bunch of alta on a service that doesn't want you to do what you want to do on it.

▲

lopis 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On one hand i love that nowadays there's an alternative to giving people you just met your phone number. On the other hand, I loathe the fact that it was post-acquisition instagram that filled that gap...

▲

Gagarin1917 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>"What's your Insta" is a standard line when you meet someone at a party.

Wow interesting, I thought social media was more an embarrassing thing to admit you participated in these days.

▲

wkat4242 4 days ago | parent [-]

Not really, instagram is a way of keeping in touch, getting notified of new events, parties etc. I also follow a lot of people doing tattoos, makeup, cosplay etc.

One of the reasons was that Instagram until about 2 years ago was pretty cool about just showing you people you follow instead of dumping unwanted algorithmic shit on you. But after the rise of tiktok they have unfortunately mirrored that. You can still switch to following in the app but it keeps switching back.

It also gives the ability to follow people without giving your phone number which is really important because most of us aren't even known by our real names.

▲

Gagarin1917 4 days ago | parent [-]

>One of the reasons was that Instagram until about 2 years ago was pretty cool about just showing you people you follow instead of dumping unwanted algorithmic shit on you. But after the rise of tiktok they have unfortunately mirrored that. You can still switch to following in the app but it keeps switching back.

So it’s become an embarrassment within the last 2 years. Yeah, this is what I’m talking about.

	▲	wkat4242 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Why would it be an embarassment? I don't understand that. It's not like my profile is 'recommended' to others, that is not something that happens. They only promote 'influencer' content with tons of followers. Also, I have of course different accounts for different communities because they don't all intermix. Not because I care about that but because others do. I am not embarassed at all about what I do. It's just that it is harder to follow the people and organisations/parties I want now because there's other crap in between that I didn't ask for. Same thing that facebook did decades ago but instagram held off on for much longer.