Instagram’s Account Status tools criticised as opaque, ineffective and discriminatory by creators in new study
Content creators have described Instagram’s new Account Status tools as an act of ‘performative transparency’, in a new paper from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) published in the Platforms and Society Journal.
Instagram’s 2023 Account Status update appeared, on paper, to be a revolution for users who suspected they had been shadow-banned, a term used when a social media platform restricts the visibility of a user’s content without telling them. This leaves users having to guess whether their lack of visibility and engagement on a social media platform is due to the quality of their content or demotion by an algorithm. Lack of visibility can affect a creator’s earnings, work opportunities and the spreading of news and activism.
The paper states this form of content moderation is becoming far-reaching, affecting users who post nudity and/or sex-related content, but increasingly also political material. Recent news reports suggest posts sharing reproductive health and queer content may also have been restricted although Meta have denied any censorship based on group affiliation or advocacy.
The new Account Status tool enables creators to check if their profile and content have violated Instagram’s newly published Recommendation Guidelines, making it ineligible for recommendations on the Explore Page and to non-followers.
However, through a qualitative survey with 100 pole dancing creators, researcher Dr Carolina Are found repeated reports that the tools offer little meaningful transparency or recourse.
Pole dancers represent a demographic greatly affected by algorithmic precarity in the creator economy. In 2019, Instagram apologised to pole dancers for hiding posts made under the community’s most-used hashtags. Instagram said at the time this restriction had been made in error.
Creators in the survey described the new tool as a superficial gesture that tells users their content cannot be recommended but offers no practical guidance on why posts are demoted, how decisions are made, how to fix issues or how to avoid future penalties.
Indeed, 65 per cent of respondents found Account Status notifications about their alleged violation of the recommendation guidelines did not improve their experience on Instagram. One respondent said: “The whole [Account Status] button feels like an appeasement strategy.” Another described the tool as “inadequate” and “ridiculous”.
Appeals also proved largely ineffective, with 72 per cent of participants saying being able to appeal recommendation guidelines violations did not improve their experiences on the app. Users described a ‘whack-a-mole’ cycle where previously appealed content was repeatedly reflagged and users were not informed if their appeals had been resolved and why, contributing to the perception of an invisible governance process.
Further, respondents found Account Status appeals difficult to access with the onus always on the user to find and appeal violating content, contrary to Meta policy’s view that the tools were to empower creators.
Some respondents said they felt ‘gaslit’ by the platform, especially after paying for Meta Verified in hopes of better support, only to receive generic or unhelpful responses.
The consequences for creators were significant. Respondents reported damages to their earnings, creative practice, wellbeing and sense of community. Many said they had started self‑censoring to avoid ‘punishment’.
Paper author Dr Carolina Are, an LSE100 Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science at LSE says of her findings: “Despite having ridden the wave framing platforms as democratising and empowering spaces that afforded previously marginalised and excluded demographics a place in art and entertainment, platforms are the new unaccountable arbiters not just of taste but of opportunity.
“The introduction of Account Status, and even of apparently better, paid-for customer service options such as Meta Verified did not empower users or improve transparency about governance: it made them feel scammed and gaslit instead of making Meta appear more transparent. Account Status therefore appears merely performative, and is a relevant case study in the additional labour users must perform to navigate Instagram as a social connection, self-expression and work space.”
She adds: “Meta’s Account Status tool is a self-serving corporate box-ticking exercise engaging with disclosure surrounding content moderation that only serves the purpose of dodging opacity accusations in times of great scrutiny over platforms, without meaningfully engaging in communications about governance. Users deserve better than this.”
For a copy of the paper, ‘Sexy jail’ and performative transparency: Evaluating shadowbanning notifications and appeals in Instagram’s Account Status among pole dancing content creators’ please visit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768624261426793