Trans artist posts topless photos to test Instagram’s rules on ‘female nipples’

A trans artist has started an experiment to determine when Instagram decides a nipple is “female.”

The platform, owned by Meta, has long been mired in controversy for its rules around female nudity, rules that have been called “confusing” and “discriminatory” by critics. #FreeTheNipple campaigners regularly criticise Instagram not allowing female nipples while permitting bare-chested men.

Instagram does not allow nudity, but does allow some photos of female nipples – but only in certain contexts, such as breastfeeding, childbirth, health-related situations, or protest. 

Two years ago, having started hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Danish artist Ada Ada Ada, began an algorithmic trial to see when the social media platform determines that a nipple is ostensibly considered “female.”

The project, In Transitu involves the artist posting a topless photo every week, in various poses to see if Instagram’s algorithms consider it a violation of the platform’s community standards. She became interested in the project – once she had started growing breasts – as a way to find out how algorithms affect our daily lives, she recently told 404 Media.

“It seemed like the nipple rule is one of the simplest ways that you can start talking about this because it’s set up as a very binary idea: female nipples no, male nipples, yes,” she said. “It prompts a lot of questions: what is male nipple? What is a female nipple?”

As part of the project, Ada has kept a spreadsheet of how many bans each post received, as well as what type of ban they faced and the censorship statistics.

Data published by 404 Media shows that more images were removed as she continued her medical transition.

The first post to be removed was one where she had been making a “kissy face” and squeezed her breasts together. Another post, she said, was removed despite her wearing a lingerie bra where her nipples were only partially visible, while an additional post in which she is wearing nipple clamps “didn’t do anything”. This surprised Ada.

“I would have expected that to be removed,” she said. “I’ve also had another picture where I’m holding Nevada, by the trans author Imogen Binnie. I’m just holding a book and that was removed.”

Ada told the tech-oriented blog that she felt she was in a “unique position” to experiment with the algorithm thanks to the effects of HRT, which include fat redistribution as well as breast growth.

“I wanted to see how Instagram and the gender classification algorithms actually understand gender,” she said. “What are the rules? Is there any way that we can reverse-engineer this?”

Another part of the project involves Ada running each image through several AI-powered gender classifiers, which have come under scrutiny, as has much of AI, for being unreliable. The results of these were “flawed”, she said because she received mixed results from week to week.

“It’s fascinating to see how the different algorithms often disagree on my gender,” she added.

The project could help adult-content creators and sex educators who, despite trying to follow Instagram’s rules, are still being impeded by automated systems, according to 404 Media journalist Emanuel Maiberg.

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