Robotic censorship strikes again

Aaaargh!

Yet again I've received sanctimonious messages from faceless Instagram bots on my @gailreidfigures account, for posting figure drawings.

With low hopes I appealed, and after a few days (during which time it was presumably sent back through the same automated trigger-happy censorious procedure) I predictably got back the same warnings, with an extra caution about my 'bio':

The Instagram Community Guidelines are: "We don’t allow nudity on Instagram, with some exceptions, like photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too."

The bots seem puzzlingly OK with plenty of my/other artists' more uncompromising drawings. Perhaps I should open an OnlyFans account, or go on the Dark Web to proliferate such filth! What they really want me to do is pay for a blue tick, which will apparently give access to some human help.

Redemption

Just to assert the glorious nature of humanity, here's my 40-minute sketch from life drawing last week - no less than 12 of the regular models in the Bristol 'United Models' collective posed together (two were out of my eyeline). To pass the time, they first counted themselves. Not in a logical way, but with affection, and for the comedy value of counting without a plan: they randomly called out consecutive numbers, restarting at “1” when two people called out simultaneously. When they finally reached 12, Fra Beecher (on the drawing above, and here at the top of the pile with pamphlet in hand) read 12 of her poems.

What now?

I've re-appealed on Instagram, and if nothing changes I'll delete those posts to avoid losing the account again. If you're interested in a steady stream of innocuous life drawings, hot and smokin’ off my sketchbook, please do follow @gailreidfigures (while it lasts). It is separate from my main profile, to mitigate the risk of the whole lot being culled. If you like your undraped figures less tame, they’re in this shocking display right here on my website. 

So THAT is why I so appreciate you being with me here, away from social media. Your comments on my blog don’t just warm my cockles, they indicate to the search engines that my site is worth ‘serving up’ to other people, which optimises my exposure (ha!). True, they’re just another algorithm, but the search engines seem a little less puritanical. For now.

Thank you for reading. Let me know with a comment below if there’s anything you’d like me to cover in future blogs.

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