Rise my Earlybird and Kelvin my Inkwell! Instagram – the much-loved photosharing app that prides itself on being “a fast, beautiful way to share your photos” – has allegedly turned into a fast, beautiful hotbed of vice, with The Huffington Post reporting that the photo filtration device has been hijacked by unseemly sexting types in a new crazed dubbed ‘Instaporn‘, that probably isn’t actually new at all and is just another example of porn being everywhere.
HuffPo reports that there are tens of thousands of images tagged (amongst other things) “sextagram,” “instaporn,” and “handbra“, which summon tens of thousands of Lo-fi renditions of Amaro filtered genitalia and Walden washed nudes; with more graphic content tagged “instasex” and “wet” receiving twice as many Hefe-soaked hits.
Thankfully this comes as no surprise to The Post, who acknowledge that “the deluge of explicit imagery accompanies nearly every social network’s transition to the mainstream“, with Instagram in particular receiving a huge spike in the number of users from 10 million to 80 million in the last year, due in part presumably to Facebook’s $1 billion high-profile buy out.
Terri Senft, a global media professor at New York University, astutely notes that “Instagram has moved from a niche thing to something people have heard about [“I heard about it before you”], and that means it has a critical mass. Whenever you have a critical mass on the internet, the sex shows up… It’s a sign that it’s reached the public knowledge-base, and now it’s solidly there.“
And much like NSFW content on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter, where admins will do all they can to police the publication of unlawful content, it looks like it’s here to stay.
‘Instaporn’ images directly contravene Instagram’s terms of service. In fact, it’s the second stipulated term of use that “You may not post nude, partially nude, or sexually suggestive photos.” However, with a small staff of just 15 full-time employees before Facebook fully acquires the company, and over five million photos uploaded every day by the app’s 80 million users, Instagram is largely dependant on its fanbase to report unwanted activity.
Chances are, however, that the only people searching for images under these hashtags who aren’t Instagram employees certainly aren’t there to protect and serve the Instagram community, who it would now seem are using the app as a means to solicit further interaction of the ‘sexy’ kind off-site, using other apps like Kik (whatever that is).
It’s kinda like Instagram is the new Grindr, but in this case, all the Helen Lovejoys are up in arms over the fact that there’s no way to police their children’s use of Instagram as a gateway to search for explicit content. I don’t have kids, but I do have a smartphone and an idea about one way you can monitor your child’s access to porn on said phone: don’t give your child a smart phone. Police their use yourself! You’re welcome.
In the interest of ‘thorough and srs jrnlism’ I investigated some of HuffPo’s chosen hashtags. I won’t share with you my findings, but I will say that (without delving too deeply into the #instasexy archives) while there is some definitely NSFW content out there, it mostly looks like the hashtags at hand have been (maybe) knowingly hijacked by flaxen-haired teenagers to garner ‘likes’ on their innocuous selfies; their re-blogged pictures of One Direction or their replica attempts at those ill-advised Jennifer Hawkins-style bikini selfies.
And isn’t that what Instagram was made for in the first place – projecting the best image of your self? That, and capturing lunches, the first day of spring and trolling critical mass personified, Kim Kardashian, for her ridiculous choice of footwear.
Photos from Pedestrian’s Instagram account, pedestriantv.
