THE owner of a life drawing club which has 'flourished' during lockdown has said she is considering legal action after her Instagram account was shut down, apparently due to nudity restrictions, losing her trade, 13,000 followers and 'influencer' status.
Joanna Susskind uses the social media platform to publicise her classes, which she has been teaching for 12 years and which moved online due to the pandemic.
The artist and businesswoman said there had been up to 500 people in the virtual drawing room this year but says bookings have plummeted since the page was removed and says she is unable to contact Instagram to find out why.
Ms Susskind said she is very careful to blur or crop any drawings or photographs for marketing purposes to adhere to Instagram's social media policy.
She believes the platform may have taken the action because of a life model photograph which showed part of a model's bottom but said her pages have been "frustratingly" shut down at least ten times over the past 12 years on social media sites.
A Facebook page she set up for the club, All the Young Nudes, has been red flagged because life drawings were deemed 'inappropriate content.' Instagram has said it is investigation the issue.
The businesswoman said she is now considering legal action against the platform for "loss of intellectual property and income."
She said: "Over the festive period I do a lot of marketing and usually we have about 100 people in the virtual drawing room "The business has been thriving through the pandemic, online, but my Instagram account has been deleted in the last few days due to someone, or a bot, reporting our account and I’ve lost my 13k audience.
"I’m pretty distraught as my online events over the festive period are proving impossible to promote now.
"I think there are robots that flag up any imagery, even a drawing of a nude person - we've had that before.
"They have got very strict rules about no full nudity so generally I try to crop or blur the things that shouldn't be seen.
"The only thing I can think of is that there was one photo showing a tiny hit of a woman's bottom. I think that's it but don't really know and it's impossible to find out because I can't get in touch with anyone at Instagram.
"I understand that they might want to tighten the rules but let the creators know?
"There has been flags been put on our account for drawings before, which I think is too much.
"This has happened to us over the years many times but their algorithms keep changing."
In October, Instagram and Facebook announced a change in in policy on female nudity following a three-month campaign which accused the platform of discriminately applying its nudity rule.
Plus-size model and activist Nyome Nicholas-Williams said Instagram was repeatedly taking down images from a “confidence shoot” she had posed for.
The model and her photographer, Alexandra Cameron, say they also received warnings that their accounts would be closed down.
They wrote a letter to Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, and eventually the platform responded by updating their nudity policy.
The social media sites say they will allow now, “content where someone is simply hugging, cupping or holding their breasts.”
Ms Susskind, who lives in Glasgow and is an animator and producer, says she directs the life models over Zoom and they record themselves in different poses which she then distributes in real time during teaching videos.
"It's very frustrating," she added: " I run the business myself and I'm spending my whole time trying to contact Instagram and I'm not spending it on the business, she said.
"We've got 13,000 followers and that's my main platform. If you have got over 13,000 followers they class you as a influencer and you get certain privileges and tools to market your product.
"It's an art class - there is a lot worse. This is my livelihood, it's how I make money."
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