Instagram will stop censoring photos of breastfeeding moms

Jeneba Jalloh Ghatt

10 years ago

Controversial Instagram photo of Elisha Wilson Beach, wife of actor Michael Beach

After a couple of years of protests, the social media networking site Instagram has decided to change its policy and will no longer censor and kick off women posting photos of themselves breastfeeding. Much fuss was kicked up after the site disabled the account of a Toronto, Canada professional photographer who posted photos of herself breasfteeding her baby.

The new policy released last Thursday mentions breastfeeding specifically:

We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.

It can safely be assumed nursing moms are also included in the new clause about harassment and shaming:

We want to foster a positive, diverse community. We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages.

Woo hoo!!! Victory!!

The previous policy, archived HERE, is more vague. Instagram currently has 300 million users.

h/t HuffPo Tech