LOS ANGELES — Instagram disabled the account of filmmaker Suzanne Hillinger this morning, only a week after her documentary “Money Shot” premiered on Netflix.
Hillinger’s ban follows the deplatforming of performer Gwen Adora, one of the main voices in the documentary providing testimony about her lived experience as a sex worker trying to exist online.
Adora’s Instagram account was disabled March 15, the same day “Money Shot” premiered.
As XBIZ reported, a top executive for NCOSE, the religiously inspired anti-porn lobby formerly known as Morality in Media, bragged earlier this month that members of the organization have “met regularly” with Meta executives responsible for Instagram moderation.
Hillinger told XBIZ she is “extremely familiar” with Meta’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, given her research on the issue of social media discrimination while making “Money Shot.”
“I know that I did not violate these rules in any way,” she added. “Last night I posted a story on my private Instagram account writing about how proud I was that we were able to make a film the resonated with audiences and ‘told a nuanced story that gave agency and respect to sex workers without exploiting them, and without exploiting survivors of non-consensual material.’ It was mostly a tribute post to my editor, Alexis Johnson, for doing such a tremendous job with such care.”
Hillinger acknowledged in her post a quote that Siri Dahl gave to XBIZ on Tuesday stating that “so many people are having conversations about sex work and porn that they’d never have had without this film.”
Instagram’s Vague and Arbitrary Policies
Given that her Instagram account is private, Hillinger speculated, she believes that it was suspended for one of two reasons: “Either an automated flagging system was triggered by my writing the words ‘agency’ and ‘sex workers’ in the same sentence; or else strangers mass reported my account because they do not like that ‘Money Shot’ provided a mainstream platform for sex workers to talk about how attacks on their industry have affected them.”
Hillinger added that while making “Money Shot,” she “knew that there would likely be a target on my back for making a film for Netflix for millions of people to see, that tried to destigmatize online sex work and for calling attention to the many ways that sex workers are censored and discriminated against on the internet. While a suspension on Instagram was not something I expected to experience, I am not surprised given how many folks in the sex work community get the same exact treatment every day.”
Meta and Instagram routinely deplatform adult performers and other sex worker accounts alleging violations of the company’s vague “sexual solicitation” policy.
Meta and Instagram’s loosely defined concept “sexual solicitation” — borrowed from archaic anti-sex work laws and imprecisely adapted to the online space by terms of service drafters — has been sharply criticized by the company’s own Oversight Board.
As XBIZ reported, the Oversight Board recommended that Meta “clarify its public-facing Sexual Solicitation policy and narrow its internal enforcement guidance.”
XBIZ reached out to Meta/Instagram for comment about the suspiciously timed deactivation of Hillinger and Adora’s account, but received no comment.