HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Instagram this week censored several posts promoting the acclaimed film history podcast “You Must Remember This,” including SFW images from ‘90s erotic drama “Indecent Proposal,” starring Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford.
The podcast’s most recent season “Erotic ‘90s” focused on mainstream Hollywood productions of that decade that highlighted sexuality in their plots, images and marketing.
Hosted by film historian, critic and podcaster Karina Longworth, “You Must Remember This” offers a nuanced, thought-provoking take on some overlooked aspects of film history.
On Monday, the “You Must Remember This Instagram” account posted the following announcement:
“We have been forced to take down some images and videos to comply with Instagram’s ‘recommendation guidelines’ regarding nudity and sexual activity. All of these posts featured promotional images for and/or discussion of major releases by mainstream studios and publishers from the ‘90s.
“We are often asked if we think Hollywood will ever again make movies geared toward a mature audience, as they did more frequently in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but everything is connected. What incentive would major corporations have to make and release movies involving sex if they knew they — and their viewers — would be handcuffed in terms of how they could promote and discuss these movies on social media?”
Longworth’s team shared with XBIZ screencaptures of Instagram’s censorship messages, targeting posts that re-purposed short TikTok videos where Longworth, shot in black and white, promotes episodes about “Indecent Proposal,” “Showgirls” and Madonna’s movie career around the time of her “Sex” art photo book.
In the videos, Longworth speaks below short montages of SFW images from those films and the book.
Instagram removed the content and penalized the account with a standard. “Your account can’t be shown to non-followers” warning.
By way of explanation, Instagram only offered the following generic message:
Our Recommendations Guidelines help to promote content that fosters a safe community on Instagram.
We try not to recommend content that may be sexually suggestive.
This includes:
– Digitally created content that displays nudity
– All accompanying text or imagery associated with sexual activity or nudity, including hashtags, terms and bio information.
According to Instagram, the small photo montages above Longworth’s entirely non-salacious, informative analysis of the material, were in violation of the third of five categories of content that they allow on their platforms, but consider non-eligible for recommendations:
“Content that may be sexually explicit or suggestive, such as pictures of people in see-through clothing. (We remove content that contains adult nudity or sexual activity.) We use technology to try to avoid showing sexually explicit or suggestive content to people under 16 years old.”
As XBIZ reported, in January, Meta’s own Oversight Board — a panel of experts selected by the company to deliberate on content decisions —recommended that the company clarify arbitrary and vague definitions concerning nudity, sexual activity and sexual solicitation.