Instagram, Facebook’s popular photo-sharing app, has a blanket ban on nudity. This has not stopped the gay news site PinkNews from instructing users how to track down lesbian porn through the site. More than three-fourths of teens under 18 use Instagram.
In a tweet posted on April 17, PinkNews said it found “the best lesbian porn on Instagram.” Since nudity of any kind of prohibited on Instagram, these pages do not technically feature pornography; rather, they provide links to accounts that repost their pornographic content. (One of the Instagram accounts, Spark Erotic, features teasers for its pornographic films like the image featured in this blog.)
The PinkNews article lists 10 different accounts on Instagram that specialize in porn, including what has been deemed “ethical, feminist porn.”
Although the Instagram accounts mentioned by PinkNews are devoted to sharing information about their respective pornographic websites, they are still accessible by all users, even users that are under 18.
A NORC University of Chicago study found that 76 percent of American teens between the ages of 13-17 use Instagram.
Instagram has attempted to crackdown on the spread of porn on its site by barring certain hashtags from appearing in search results. As the Data Pack explained in 2016, there are two ways Instagram censors hashtags: by restricting the search results to only the top results, or by banning search terms all together.
Users who attempt to search for completely banned hashtags will be told no results are available, while users who try to search for restricted hashtags will be met with a message that says “Recent posts from [the hashtag] are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram's community guidelines.”
Data Pack’s examples of restricted hashtags from 2016 includes vulgar terms, but also innocuous words such as “elevator,” “Easter,” and “Kansas.” As of April 2018, those terms are still being partially hidden.
Some pornography-related hashtags, including #kinkyqueers and #queenporn, are still openly searchable on Instagram without any restrictions. The pages that PinkNews advertise use those hashtags and similar ones.
Instagram has become the subject of many feminist protests for its ban on posting nudity that includes female nipples. In 2015, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom explained its prohibition on nipples has to do with age-restriction guidelines set forth by Apple to make items available in the app store to people aged 12 and older.
