HealthBBC

Bristol nipple tattooist frustrated by social media censorship

A Bristol tattooist who creates realistic nipple tattoos for breast cancer survivors keeps getting her posts removed by Instagram and Facebook's nudity filters.

Lauren Carter says her tattoos on post-mastectomy patients are flagged as nudity and banned.

The Long Sip
What happened

Lauren Carter, who tattoos realistic nipples for post-mastectomy patients, says Meta platforms repeatedly remove her work as nudity, blocking her from reaching new clients.

The detail

Carter says her posts are automatically removed nine times out of ten, and she notes that photos of male nipples after the same treatment are never flagged.

What it means

Meta says it recognises the role of medical tattooists and is working to improve how its systems identify health-related content, but Carter says appeals go unread.

For you

If you or someone you know is searching for post-mastectomy tattoo artists, try searching directly on Google rather than relying on social media profiles.

Full story at BBC

What readers are saying

GirlsTripAlly
The fact that male nipple tattoos aren't getting flagged shows exactly what's going on here - the algorithm can't tell the difference between medical work and something else, but it's making a gendered assumption anyway. Try appealing every single removal with a note saying it's post-mastectomy reconstruction, not that it always works but at least there's a paper trail. 🤦
Alan
The thing that gets me is Meta says they want the content on the platform but the bots are removing it nine times out of 10 and when she appeals it's like no one reads it. So they've built a system that works against what they're claiming to support. That's not a tech problem, that's just broken.

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