MENLO PARK, Calif. — Merely a few hours after Meta’s launch of its Twitter-competitor app Threads, the head of Instagram confirmed that female nipples and everything else considered as “nudity” will not be allowed on the platform.
Answering an open query on Threads by pop tech journalist Taylor Lorenz, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri — a close collaborator of Meta’s owner Mark Zuckerberg — confirmed that the Instagram guidelines will also apply to the company’s new Twitter-like platform.
“Can women post nips on here?” Lorenz asked shortly after Threads’ launch.
“Nope, same community guidelines as Instagram,” Mosseri replied. “We don’t have any philosophical issues with nudity, we just can’t verify age or consent unfortunately, which makes it a safety issue.”
Mosseri’s candid reply providing a rationale for the controversial “no female nipple” policy is unusual for a high-level Meta exec.
As XBIZ reported, in January Meta’s own Oversight Board — a panel of experts selected by the company to deliberate on content decisions — released a decision recommending the company clarify arbitrary and vague definitions concerning nudity, sexual activity and sexual solicitation.
The Board ultimately found that the Sexual Solicitation Community Standard “contains overbroad criteria in the internal guidelines provided to reviewers. This poorly tailored guidance contributes to over-enforcement by reviewers and confusion for users. Meta acknowledged this, as it explained to the Board that applying its internal guidance could ‘lead to over-enforcement’ in cases where the criteria for implicit sexual solicitation are met but it is clear that there was ‘no intention to solicit sex.’”
Moreover, the fact that reviewers “repeatedly reached different outcomes about this content” suggested to the Board “a lack of clarity for moderators on what content should be considered sexual solicitation.”