As a fat, Black queer content creator and entrepreneur, I’m no stranger to censorship. My work as a yoga teacher and author blurs the intersections of sexuality and culture in a way that frequently conflicts with both Meta and TikTok’s community standards, and my work has been routinely banned and blocked on both platforms.
At a certain point, censorship feels like the price you pay for being fat and Black and daring to be liberated, especially when my thinner, whiter colleagues don’t face the same censorship. But the team behind my app The Underbelly doesn’t feel the same way. They feel demoralized by the way our brand’s paid advertisements are consistently censored and suppressed by both Meta and Tiktok. And unlike my organic content, which is occasionally spicier than Meta and Tiktok will allow, our paid ads don’t actually violate community standards.
Meta and Tiktok have both been openly criticized for holding community standards and guidelines that explicitly suppress content created by BIPOC, LGBTQIA and fat creators, all of which has been extensively reported by a wide range of media outlets for a number of years. According to Meta, the intention of their community standards is to “create a place for expression and give people a voice.” Similarly, Tiktok says their community guidelines exist “to help ensure a safe, trustworthy and vibrant experience.” These platforms can be easily manipulated to provoke global violence and warfare, so it makes sense they would maintain standards in order to have safe spaces for content creation and sharing. However, instead of giving people a voice, very often these community standards relegate an untold number of creators to the shadows.
All of this got me thinking about how my body has been used in global and national campaigns by brands like Adidas and Gatorade. When I thought about the contrast between how those brands have profited from using my likeness and the difficulty my own brand has doing the same thing, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why is Adidas allowed to make money off my body, but I can’t?”
It’s easy to say ‘stop making controversial content’, especially when you consider how social media can be used as a tool to incite gender-based violence and contribute to theatrical warfare around the world. The use of “algospeak” and other methods of staying within the algorithmic boundaries of community guidelines have become normalized in content creation. However, sexuality is central to Black female power, and it’s a linchpin in how we find community with one another and foster healing for our families and children. The work of marginalized creators can be seen in the body positivity movement, which, like Meta and Tiktok, aims to “give people a voice” and “ensure a safe, trustworthy, and vibrant experience.” However, the content coming from within this movement is precisely what’s being censored.
From a purely capitalist perspective, this type of censorship limits the expansion of the global marketplace, creating a cultural market cap that not only limits opportunity for marginalized creators to live their dreams but also implements guard rails that restrict the economic flow of assets to underrepresented communities. What ends up happening is a small number of creators are allowed to flourish, while everyone else is cast to the periphery.
In order for the global economic landscape to expand in a world that is still palpitating from the impact of COVID-19, the digital marketplace needs to reflect values that represent a rapidly evolving social zeitgeist, not just those that trumpet white cisnormative patriarchal hegemony.
Goldman Sachs estimates that the creator economy could approach half a trillion dollars by 2027, with a community of over 50 million creators and counting. Of those 50 million, Forbes estimates that less than 5% are considered professional, which places further limitations on the expansion of the global marketplace.
Meta and Tiktok have built their viability on the backs of underrepresented voices and use content by marginalized artists and creators to propel their business models forward. Simultaneously, they control creative narratives using very thinly veiled homophobic, racist, ableist and fatphobic values under the guise of safety, touting community guidelines only when it’s convenient for their goals.
The maintenance of restrictive social media community standards encourages a new generation of fascism that allows geopolitical socio-economic inequity to thrive in an era where we have an opportunity to expand capitalism’s definition to include all of us, not just some of us. Without a nuanced lens, the community standards and guidelines that are meant to protect us end up feeding the problem they were created to solve.
Jessamyn Stanley (jessamynstanley.com) is a writer, social advocate and co-founder of The Underbelly, a queer-inclusive wellness brand.
0 Comments