Instagram reduced the visibility of a lesbian series' page. The word “lesbians” is commonly wrongly censored by social media, as the term is still widely associated with pornographic content.
When the Instagram page of the lesbian series Q publishes, on April 16, 2026, an announcement for an upcoming event, no one asks any questions. However, a few hours later, the page administrators received a notification from the social network: there was a problem with their publication.
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Instagram explains to them that their “ followers are less likely to see » their publication, because it does not respect the community guidelines regarding “ nudity or sexual acts “. However, there is no question of sexuality: the publication promoted a meeting on the theme of self-financing lesbian projects, on the occasion of the launch of crowdfunding for a film. “ Friday April 19 at 7:30 p.m. we are pleased to host an evening of support for the launch of crowdfunding Q: the film! On this occasion we are organizing a round table on the subject: When lesbians self-finance “, explained the post.
No nudity or references to sexual acts in the post. Their only mistake is using a term that does not always please the moderation algorithms of social networks: lesbians.
The word lesbian is often censored on the Internet
Facebook, for a time, also censored pages containing the terms “lesbians” and Instagram continues to do so. In 2021, Instagram censored the hashtag #lesbians, which no longer appeared in stories — for exactly the same reasons as today: the term was associated with “ content that may violate the rules “. The platform admitted to having made an error. But in 2023, a new problem arose: this time it was some of the publications using the hashtag #lesbian which were unfairly hidden.
Ironically, the censorship of the publication and the shadow ban of Q's account takes place on Lesbian Visibility Day — an international date that aims to fight against the erasure of lesbian people. In his post, Q explained precisely that “ Money is politics, and so is our visibility! “. A question was asked: “ what is the cost of independence for our visibility? “.
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