Dr Carolina Are: 'Bodies have rights just like words do'
Our Stories
Dr Carolina Are
Bodies have rights just like words do
The online abuse and censorship I’ve faced have shown me how little my voice matters in the rules that affect my own online life.
As an abusive relationship and sexual assault survivor, I found education, support and understanding for what had happened to me through sex-positive and sex education accounts on social media. It was through those same social media platforms that I, a recreational pole dancer turned instructor and performer, found a global support network of dancers who celebrated each other and helped me love my body again after abuse. Now, those spaces and networks are under threat, simply because social media platforms have decided that nudity - aka women’s and marginalised users’ bodies - are inappropriate, risky and worth censoring. I don’t want to lose those networks and the opportunities they provide, and I don’t want people who go through my same experiences to be left unsupported.
I was in my second year as a PhD researcher focusing on online abuse and conspiracy theories when Instagram started shadowbanning pole dancers. Suddenly, in the space of a few weeks during the summer of 2019, all the hashtags we used to network, connect, find inspiration and learn were shadowbanned, hidden from users who didn’t follow us. Why? Because Instagram deemed them “inappropriate” and somehow against their community guidelines for nudity and sexual activity - even when we posted sweaty, clumsy workout videos like I did at the time. That’s when I became an anti-censorship activist, using my moderation experience and my academic expertise to tell the stories of users like me.
After the 2018 Tumblr adult content purge, pole dancing’s foremothers, strippers and sex workers, had their accounts deleted and/or shadowbanned. Recreational pole dancers were just the latest target in a war social media platforms have waged on bodies and sex, and they were soon joined by athletes, models, artists, sex toy and lingerie brands, activists.
At the time, Instagram directly apologised through my blog for censoring pole dancers “in error”. Yet, the censorship of bodies continued across social media, affecting creators’ freedom of expression and, particularly in a locked down world where users’ social media presence is strictly connected to their work, their income. Sex workers found themselves de-platformed by Instagram, TikTok, OnlyFans and more platforms. Pole dancers continued to be shadowbanned, unable to reach enough audiences to advertise online classes. Artists had their art deleted, models had their shots censored.
When you work and create through your body on social media platforms, you are a double target: platforms try to silence you because you’re viewed as too ‘risky’ for their ‘safe’ communities, and other users repeatedly abuse you through online threats and cyber-flashing, unpunished, while also trying to get your account deleted. This double-edged online moderation approach is nothing but a repetition of gender and hate based violence, asking targets to change their behaviours in order to receive less abuse and to be less of a hassle.
My TikTok profile has been deleted four times in less than a year, and it was only recovered when journalists pointed out the absurdity of a content moderation PhD being censored online. My Instagram profile was also briefly deleted last summer, and I constantly reach less than a third of my following because my posts are ‘risky,’ but the unsolicited dick pics in my DMs aren’t viewed as such. Throughout these experiences, other users are free to send me rape threats online because my safety, or my right to express myself or work online, aren’t a priority to platforms.
I hope the European Union will not follow the example of FOSTA/SESTA, the exception to the United States’ Telecommunications Act Section 230 which led to this snowballing censorship of bodies. It’s time for legislators in the EU and beyond to take note of the experiences they are overlooking. It’s time they included those affected by their policies in the drafting of legislation that, like the Digital Services Act, is going to set the rules of our life as online citizens.
Bodies are a form of expression. Bodies have rights just like words do. Let’s protect them too.
Dr Carolina Are
Online Moderation Researcher & Activist