‘Account Restricted’: Sex-ed content creators fight shadowbans on social media sites

“I had my account banned for a brief period and honestly, it is traumatic not because of the page or the clout, it is hours of hard work and it is a community we painstakingly build and foster,” says Apurupa Vatsalya, lead of Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice at The YP Foundation. Vatsalya, a sex-ed content creator, goes by the handle @inapurupriate on Instagram.

Even sex-ed content creators with millions of followers, such as Dr Tanaya Narendra (better known as Dr Cuterus), Leeza Mangaldas (@leezamangaldas), and Seema Anand (@seemaanandstorytelling) have seen their accounts being restricted and their content being shadowbanned. Dr Narendra says Anand’s Facebook account had been banned for six months before she even got to know about it.

Many sex-ed content creators say they have been receiving notifications from Meta flagging their content, saying their accounts will not be shown to non-followers anymore. Meta did not respond to indianexpress.com’s request for a comment.

Dr Narendra says she first heard about this when relationship and intimacy coach Pallavi Barnwal got in touch with her. When Dr Narendra discussed it with her fellow content creators, she says she learnt that many of them had been getting such notifications on Instagram.

Many sex-ed content creators say they have been receiving notifications from Meta flagging their content, saying their accounts will not be shown to non-followers anymore. (Credit: Tanaya Narendra)

“I got it, Zoya (@uteropedia) got it, Leeza, Seema…everyone got it. So, if a reel is going viral, it will not show up on ‘explore’, ‘get recommended’, or be in the ‘people you may know’ or ‘people to follow’ sections. Unless someone actively goes to the page and shares that information, there is no way of engaging with it,” says Dr Narendra.

Zoya Ali is a reproductive health scientist and accredited sex educator specialising in gynaecological health. She was allegedly restricted because her bio and display picture violated guidelines. “It was an illustration of a uterus with flowers and I had no choice but to change it,” she says.

Karishma Swarup (@talkyounevergot), who also faced similar restrictions, says when she removed the flagged post, in a few days, another post that had been posted earlier was flagged. The cycle kept repeating, she says. The same thing happened to Dr Narendra. “There is no winning. They flag something, I archive it; then they go further back into my data and flag that,” she says.

Sex-ed content creators say they have been facing similar issues on YouTube and LinkedIn too.

“If I have even mentioned sex toys in a video, the entire video gets restricted and does not show up unless you type in the specific keywords. My YouTube videos may have lakhs of views but I cannot monetise them if they are restricted,” says Khushboo Bist (@khushboobistt), a sex educator and intimacy coach on Instagram and YouTube, about the latter.

According to YouTube, its nudity and sexual content policies prohibit explicit content intended to be sexually gratifying from appearing on its platform. “We do not allow content that depicts non-consensual sex acts or unwanted sexualisation. YouTube has always had clear child safety policies that prohibit content that exploits or endangers minors across all YouTube product surfaces like video, livestream, and comments,” YouTube said in a statement.

Dr Prateek Makwana (@fertility_scribbles), who makes content on male sexual health, says that though his content has not been restricted, he too has been failing to monetise content.

“Earlier, it would be trolls. Now, it is the censorship, the moral policing that inherently comes on the platform, which is more discouraging than actual trolls themselves,” says Swarup.

Mangaldas believes this is disincentivising sex education content creators as they cannot make money from what they do, even if the content is doing well.

Barnwal says she has faced this issue on LinkedIn with her account (@coachpallavibarnwal on IG) being banned multiple times. “They say their algorithm cannot differentiate between educational sexual content and provocative content,” she says.

Raj Armani, the COO of one of India’s first adult toy store sites Imbesharam.com, was also banned on LinkedIn for some time, without any clarification on what the offences were, he says. “I had posted a story Bloomberg had done about us, which had a picture of a condom factory. I assume that was the last offence after which my account was banned. I had to state in writing that I would never break the guidelines to have my account reinstated,” he says.

According to a report published in January 2022 by the US-based Centre for Intimacy Justice, a non-profit social change organisation, 60 companies that focused on healthcare for women and people of diverse genders saw Meta reject their ads. (Credit: Raj Armani)

Obscure guidelines

So what exactly are these guidelines all the social media sites keep referring to? For the uninitiated, the social media landscape runs on community guidelines and rules that prohibit the sharing of content that depicts anything deemed adult or sexually explicit content for safety reasons.

Meta’s community guidelines about sexual content deem that any nudity or sexual activity is restricted “because some people in our community may be sensitive to this type of content”, according to its website.

“In addition, we default to removing sexual imagery to prevent the sharing of non-consensual or underage content. Restrictions on the display of sexual activity also apply to digitally created content unless it is posted for educational, humorous or satirical purposes,” the website adds.

“They just want you to read the guidelines and make your own interpretation of it rather than clarifying it themselves,” says Armani.

Dr Narendra says one of the reels flagged on her account talked about whether you can wash your hair when you are on your period. “I have no idea how I am soliciting sex by explaining this,” she says, adding, “I keep talking about these restrictions with my partner manager but nothing ever comes out of it.”

Mangaldas, whose content is more pleasure-focused, says, “Health is not just the absence of disease. Pleasure is health. Looking at health and pleasure as separate is having a puritanical view of sex and pleasure as something dirty, shameful and not welcome on this platform (Meta).”

“If you type the word vulva, vagina, genital, etc, you will get a prompt saying similar content has been reported and you should consider changing it,” says Swarup.

Both Mangaldas and Dr Narendra say these restrictions are disproportionately affecting content on women’s health.

According to a report published in January 2022 by the US-based Centre for Intimacy Justice, a non-profit social change organisation, 60 companies that focused on healthcare for women and people of diverse genders saw Meta reject their ads. The ads in question covered issues like bladder control, breast pumps, endometriosis, fertility, menopause, pelvic pain, pregnancy, postpartum clothing, sexual consent, sexual pleasure, and urinary tract infections. Even ads that included words such as ‘vaginal’, ‘vaginal health’, ‘menopause’ and ‘OB/GYN’ were rejected as, according to the tech giant, they represented “adult content” or advertised “sexual pleasure”, according to Forbes, which reported that half of the affected companies also found that Meta locked them out of their accounts.

In response, Meta overturned some of those takedowns and later updated its rules to include more examples of ads that are allowed, such as for “products addressing the effects of menopause,” “pain relief during sex” and “sex education,” according to a report. But The Washington Post reported that the nonprofit in April filed a complaint with the agency, alleging that despite the rule changes, Meta is still “persistently and systemically rejecting advertisements aimed at women and people of underrepresented genders, while permitting those targeted toward men”.

Sex-ed content creators are urging social media sites to go back to the drawing board and start from the beginning. (Credit: Tanaya Narendra)

The road ahead

Leeza says when she ultimately appealed the content that was flagged, it resulted in no resolution.” So, I deleted all the content flagged in order to get my account status back to ‘eligible for recommendation’. This is the case for most of us.”

Sex-ed content creators are urging social media sites to go back to the drawing board and start from the beginning. Consult content creators and educate them about their dynamic algorithm, while also informing the said algorithm, they say.

“It is extremely important for adolescents and young people (actually people at all ages, stages and genders) to have access to information on body, identity, sexuality, relationships and so on as it not only enables us to make informed decisions but is potentially lifesaving,” says Vatsalya. “And especially for neuro-queer folks like myself – where there aren’t any formal avenues to access affirmative information, we need these online safer spaces to ensure that we don’t just slip through the cracks,” she adds.

Dr Narendra agrees, pointing out that though she is a doctor, she does not have any journal subscriptions as “they are so expensive”. “Information that is generally locked inside expensive journals is given democratic and barrier-free access on social; why put it behind closed doors?” she asks.

Dr Narendra had been invited to work on the National Consultation on Comprehensive Abortion Care by the World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Where she used the responses from her followers on providing better access to abortion. “There is actually a policy-level change being made from this content. The kind of work I can do in my clinic sitting with one patient versus what I can do here (on social media) is vastly different. We are influencing policy and providing better healthcare access,” she says. Only to add that she questions herself sometimes. “Why am I doing this when even my partner manager (from Meta) claims to know nothing about the guidelines and why my content is being restricted?”

📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!