When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female?

For the past two years an algorithmic artist who goes by Ada Ada Ada has been testing the boundaries of human and automated moderation systems on various social media platforms by documenting her own transition. 

Every week she uploads a shirtless self portrait to Instagram alongside another image which shows whether a number of AI-powered tools from big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft that attempt to automatically classify the gender of a person see her as male or female. Each image also includes a sequential number, year, and the number of weeks since Ada Ada Ada started hormone therapy. 

In 2023, after more than a year into the project which she named In Transitu, Instagram removed one of Ada Ada Ada’s self portraits for violating Instagram’s Community Guidelines against posting nudity. We can’t say for certain why Instagram deleted that image specifically and whether it was a human or automated system that flagged it because Meta’s moderation systems remain opaque, but it was at that moment that Instagram first decided that Ada Ada Ada’s nipples were female, and therefore nudity,  which isn’t allowed on the platform. On Instagram, shirtless men are allowed and shirtless women are also allowed as long as they don't show nipples, so what constitutes nudity online often comes down to the perceived gender of an areola.

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