Anfang der Woche hatte Instagram einen Fehler, bei dem sie grundlos einige Konten suspendiert haben. Dieses Bug wurde wieder behoben und die meisten Konten sind wieder online. Das Gefühl, dass das Unternehmen einfach Konten deaktiviert, kennen viele Frauen aber auch ohne Systemfehler. Sobald eine Frau ein freizügiges Foto postet, kann es sein, dass das Konto deaktiviert wird. Genau mit diesem Thema befasst sich die Akademikerin und Pole-Tänzerin Dr. Carolina Are. Carolina hat ihre Forschung auf die Zensur und Shadow Banning fokussiert und forscht sozusagen durch ihr Pole-Dancing an sich selber.

wmn hat sich mit Carolina über Content Moderation und wie man gegen die Unternehmen angehen, unterhalten. Das Interview ist auf Englisch, da Carolina in London lebt und kein Deutsch spricht.

Wer ist Dr. Carolina Are überhaupt?

wmn: Can you describe what it is you do? Looking at your Instagram and Twitter accounts, you seem to be doing a bit of everything.

Carolina: I call myself a pole-dancing academic. I am a platform governance researcher with a PhD in content moderation focused on online abuse and conspiracy theories. 

When I started my master’s, I took up pole dancing as a hobby. Then, conveniently or inconveniently, during the second year of my PhD, where I was studying platform governance of abusive behaviour, my arse started getting censored. 

My pole-dancing content began getting shadow-banned and censored in all sorts of ways, particularly on Instagram. Therefore, I ended up shifting my public academic persona into looking more into censorship and censorship of nudity, which affected me.

I have a blog where I post educational and pole content. Additionally, I’m an activist, mainly against censorship online. I guess you could say pole dancing academic blogger and content creator activist.

Was ist Zensur und wie macht sie sich bemerkbar?

wmn: Censorship is a term that gets thrown around a lot at the moment. In terms of your research, how would you describe the disparity in censorship between men and women when it comes to their bodies?

Carolina: You’ve picked up on a few interesting concepts there. I feel the idea of censorship is a bit of a conspiracy theory, particularly for the [political] right. Republicans started throwing the conspiracy theory about shadow-banning around.

Shadow-banning is when your content isn’t deleted from platforms, but it’s hidden, so other people can’t find it, and you don’t get any reach. 

The issue is that more often than not, whether these people get shadowbanned or not, it doesn’t make a difference, because they’re not necessarily working through their platforms. It’s an issue in terms of freedom of speech. It’s also a form of necessary governance by platforms that don’t want to remove people’s right to speak. They want to limit their reach if they consider them harmful. 

The issue with the way bodies are governed is that they do bear the brunt of censorship online. As an academic, pole performer and instructor, I’m privileged compared to sex workers who are essentially de-platformed. 

Warum werden Sex-Arbeiter:innen zensiert?

Why is this happening? Because the FOSTA-SESTA Act, which is an exception to Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act in the U.S., essentially made platforms liable for what their users post. Before, platforms were not liable. Essentially, they were seen just as an intermediary. 

If you just went and harassed a variety of people on platforms, those platforms were not going to be blamed for it, because you were doing the harassment. This intermediary status has been removed from platforms, when it comes to content that facilitates sex trafficking. If platforms are seen to be facilitating sex trafficking, they’re going to get done for it. Sex trafficking is a crime, hence why platforms have been over-censoring to prevent themselves from being seen to be facilitating said crime. 

Was hat künstliche Intelligenz mit Zensur zu tun?

They’ve gone after things that their Artificial Intelligence has been trained to recognise. That includes consensual sex work, which is a job, not a crime, or sex education, self-expression, art, and content creation.

Kann künstliche Intelligenz (KI) voreingenommen sein?
Eine neue Studie unter der Leitung mehrerer Universitäten zeigt, dass neuronale Netze, die aus voreingenommenen Internetdaten aufgebaut sind, Robotern beibringen, toxische Stereotypen übernehmen. Darunter fallen auch Sexismus und Rassismus.

This is what happens when you put a private company in charge of regulating itself. The platform cares about making money and about preserving its reputation. They’ve been focussing on censoring women’s bodies or nonconforming bodies. 

Was sind „nonconforming bodies“?
Als „Geschlechts-untypisch“ werden Menschen bezeichnet, die nicht den Geschlechternormen entsprechen, die von ihnen erwartet werden. Der Begriff bezieht sich in der Regel auf den Ausdruck oder die Darstellung des Geschlechts, das heißt, wie jemand aussieht und sich kleidet. Er kann sich auch auf Verhalten, Vorlieben und Rollen beziehen, die nicht den Geschlechternormen entsprechen.

The issue is that when you have a largely male workforce making the rules, they assume that women’s bodies are inherently sexual. Just by existing in your body, you’re performing a sex act, according to these people. It has been proven that platforms are replicating offline inequalities and offline privilege on a global, massive exponential scale.

Das Gender Gap in künstlicher Intelligenz
Studien haben ergeben, dass nur 10–15 % der Forscher:innen im Bereich des maschinellen Lernens in den führenden Technologieunternehmen Frauen sind. Zusätzlich sind weniger als 14 % der Autoren von KI-Forschungsarbeiten Frauen; und auf den größten globalen Online-Plattformen für Datenwissenschaft sind Frauen mit 17–18 % unterrepräsentiert.

This is what happens when you put a private company in charge of regulating itself. […] They’ve been focussing on censoring women’s bodies or nonconforming bodies. 

Dr. Carolina Are

Gilt Content Moderation für jede Person?

wmn: At the end of the day, these companies are private companies, though. If they have a term in their conditions saying they don’t allow any form of female nudity on their platform, what leg do you have to stand on?

Carolina: The issue with the terms and conditions is not that they’re saying what’s allowed and what isn’t. It’s that they are very loosely applied. If there was more transparency about how they’re being applied, what is taken down and why, people would probably accept it. The issue is that there are a lot of people, me included, who act within community guidelines and are censored regardless. And then you find accounts like Playboy or celebrity accounts that have a blank check to essentially post everything.  

wmn: I remember you posting something on Twitter about this. You were comparing this to Kim Kardashian. She’s, as far as I know, never been removed from any platform.

Carolina: No, because celebrities and verified users make money for platforms. They are a matter of prestige for platforms who bring clicks and hits. While average users, particularly sex workers and people whose bodies are expendable, are viewed as a danger. 

If you look at Playboy, for instance, you can’t report them for nudity and sexual activity. If you posted something like they would, you would either be reported, or the content would be taken down. 

There is this big discrepancy between what these people are allowed, and what average users are allowed. When the film Hustlers with JLO and Cardi B came out, actual pole dancers and strippers were getting their content and platform removed… We were being deplatformed and shadow-banned. At the same time, we were being served ads for Hustlers over and over where the celebrities mirrored the aesthetic of a stripper. The actresses wore even less than what a lot of strippers would wear. There’s this massive discrepancy in inequality between what’s allowed and what isn’t. 

But, how much can you fight when this is what the rules are saying? There are a lot of lobbying and campaigning efforts to recognise a variety of forms of nudity as freedom of expression. I don’t know where this will go, as there are a lot of powerful players in the game. When you latch on to something as emotional as child abuse, and you use that to get everything else censored, even if it doesn’t fit into that category. It’s very difficult to send a nuanced message across. 

The campaigning efforts are all about freedom of expression, nuance and even just transparency and communication from platforms, which is currently what we do not have. 

Wie kann man gegen diese Content Moderation als „normaler“ Mensch angehen?

wmn: You have quite a big following on all platforms. What advice would you give smaller accounts that don’t have that kind of reach and connections?

Carolina: That’s a question that I get a lot, and every time I want to puke a little because of the advice I give. I advise people to sprinkle fully clothed posts in between their naked content, which is not something I advocate for. It dilutes the message of bodily freedom and acceptance. But if that’s what keeps you on the platform, I recommend doing that.

What’s frustrating in these situations is that people, particularly sex workers, find themselves hopping from one platform to another, waiting to get deleted there, too. People need to spread themselves thin to avoid censorship. It’s about saying, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, diversify your content creation streams, and don’t rely on just one platform. 

Von „Lonely Clams“ zu „OnlyFans„

What’s important is that platforms seem to be against soliciting. You can barely already exist as a sex worker. Your presence should serve as an advertisement for what you do, but if you say something like „Hit me up in the DMs„, or „Link in bio„, coupled with a visibly sex-working or spicy profile, those two criteria be enough to get you deleted – at least from Instagram. 

So a variety of people have started to say different things, such as „Lonely Clams“ instead of „OnlyFans„, or „You know where to find it„. The platforms will catch on to that, which is a risk. 

Wäre eine europäische Plattform eine Alternative?

wmn: It’s interesting that you mention that, because I’ve noticed that on TikTok, where users change “Sex” to “Seggs”, for example. I’m curious, the platforms we’re using are mainly US-American or Chinese. Do you think this would be different if we had a European platform?

Carolina: That’s an interesting one, because it depends on where the platform is being developed. Italy has just voted for a far-right anti-abortion government, which doesn’t make me very happy as an Italian. So, the question is, which country in Europe?

Italien und die Abtreibung
Vor kurzem wurde in Italien wieder gewählt und Giorgia Meloni als neue Premierministerin gewählt. Meloni hat zwar erklärt, dass sie nicht vorhat, das italienische Abtreibungsgesetz abzuschaffen, aber beabsichtigt, Abtreibungen einzuschränken, wie beispielsweise durch finanzielle Unterstützung von Frauen, die eine Schwangerschaft austragen, anstatt sich für einen Abbruch zu entscheiden.

Europe as a union is a lot more progressive than the US, for example. The Digital Services Act is the content moderation regulation that is going to be approved sooner rather than later. And Europe has a lot more measures in place to protect freedom of expression, users, and their rights. Maybe it would be different. 

There are two issues with the current platforms that we’re using, right? Foremost, as we said, SESTA was pushed by a group of evangelical Christians in the US. Therefore, it has a very puritan American mentality, which is not only blended with the hate towards sex, but also with a very American free market capitalism kind of vibe. 

Wer ist die christliche Gruppe, von der Carolina redet?
Carolina redet in dem Interview von einer christlichen Gruppe. Diese Gruppe nennt sich Exodus Cry und ist eine amerikanische christliche Non-Profit-Organisation, die sich für die Abschaffung der legalen kommerziellen Sexindustrie, einschließlich Pornografie, Stripclubs und Sexarbeit, sowie des illegalen Sexhandels einsetzt.

And then, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got a Chinese platform. People that used to work for TikTok told me that, of course, it isn’t fair that content gets censored, but TikTok doesn’t advertise itself as a free speech platform. Compared to the US, there’s this commitment to being able to say everything provided you’re not saying it with your body. 

These cultural differences are making a huge impact. I don’t think Europe would make the platform perfect, but there is a bigger tradition of worker’s rights in Europe. At the same time, I feel conservatism ebbs and flows accordingly, depending on countries. 

What’s heartbreaking is that platforms have allowed more sexual freedom for quite a while, and now they’re removing that from users and, particularly, sex workers. Their safety had improved thanks to online work. There’s research on how violent crimes against sex workers have decreased since the creation of online personalised ads and stuff like that.

Ist OnlyFans ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung?

wmn: What’s your opinion on a platform like OnlyFans? Because they seem to advertise themselves that anything can go on their platform.

Carolina: I mean, it’s not like anything can go. I don’t use OnlyFans myself, so I’m not as educated about it. A variety of users that use it say that there are a lot of checks and balances. For instance, people cannot be in your video if you don’t tag them or if they don’t have an OnlyFans account themselves. I don’t love it because they did a U-turn last year, due to being pressured by payment providers. 

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wmn: That was when MasterCard and Visa wanted to pull their payment services from the platform, right?

Carolina: These payment providers are pushed by the same US-American groups who are trying to get sex deplatformed. These groups are fighting through content, moderation, and bans. It’s easier to fight through banks because the financial notion of risk is connected to American banking.

I don’t love OnlyFans because they backed down straight away. And when they realised that most of their income came from porn, they did a U-turn. I don’t love them ethically, but I do believe they created a huge space for people. Suddenly sex workers were not dependent on third-party managers, studios, or venues. They could shoot from the comfort and safety of their home. Of course, any platform like that is going to be exploited. But I find it quite striking that people are going up against these platforms when the majority of child abuse content is on Facebook. Deplatforming a whole population because of failures in detection seems absurd to me.

Wenn dich Dr. Carolina Ares Forschung interessiert, kannst du ihr auf TikTok oder Instagram folgen.