Big Tech Small Business Censorship

We are all very well aware of the now raging debate about censorship on Twitter and of the US Government’s micro-management of the digital world, working in collusion with Facebook and Google to limit dissent and questioning of the key narratives of our time. At least we ought to be. And in this exceptionally difficult environment for small business, in my small way, I have fallen foul of our masters Stateside.

Facebook and Meetup have shadowbanned both of my businesses. They both kinda admit this. I have an apology from a Facebook employee with a promise that their tech team will investigate. That was four months ago and despite chasing there has been no meaningful response. I’ve had a payment holiday from Meetup as their apology for being, well, crap. But…

Meetup has shadowbanned me, despite this being a pay-for-service, despite me bringing over 12,000 new subscribers to their platform and despite me working within their guidelines with no strikes. Until yesterday… Yesterday evening I received an email from Meetup’s Trust and Safety team:

Nude and sexual content that is publicly visible, pornographic, or unrelated to a Meetup group is not allowed on Meetup. Publicly shared photos must be appropriate for general audiences. That said, we removed your group's cover photo.

Please use discretion when posting mature content on Meetup in the future. We ask that you review your group’s content and take the following actions to prevent this issue from escalating:

* Remove all pornographic or sexual content, content intended to sexually arouse, or content focused on genitalia
* Restrict any non-sexual, identity, or lifestyle-related nude content to privately shared photo albums

What do you think?

I responded with this email and will update this post with the Meetup reply, if I get one:

This group has been active since 2016 and does not share graphic or racey images. Please link me to the graphic and racey images locations and I'll gladly remove them, if I believe a mistake has been made and they are what you assert. I see you've removed the Life Drawing Wales banner which has been in place for several years. This showed nothing that was genital or nipple and complies with Facebook's and Instagram's policies on nudes and I believed complied with Meetups. So please explain how it is pornographic.

As for any complaint. It's a life drawing group. We draw nude people. What do you or visitors expect to see!!! Bowls of fruit?

This group has 156 five star reviews and 2022 members so I think a full explanation of your action in reaction to one complaint ought to be in order especially as when I started the group this situation arose and staff at meetup agreed that posting as I did was ok because it was not sexualised and was art.

In particular I’d like to know how a photo of a body, side on and not displaying sexual behaviour or is pornographic.

Meetup are woke on steroids, which is why I made the decision to close the group in mid-December and interestingly a few hours prior to this warning email from Meetup HQ. However, I don’t think that Meetup is monitoring my content as had they been doing so they would have flagged this ‘highly sexualised’ image a few years ago. I do however think that the cancel culture morons followed a link to Life Drawing Wales that I shared on a Wales Online article and because they didn’t like my content there they small-mindedly and quite viciously made a complaint, this in order to damage my business. 

There are other platforms that have struggled with my content due to complaints of opinion, mostly to do with my opposition to government restrictions and mandates during the ‘Covid Crisis’, NextDoor, Instagram etc. But I am in good company. A leading figurative artist of over fifty years, based in Cardiff, who I work with and regard as a friend, Harry Holland, is fearful that he will lose his Instagram account and now has to blur out his painted nipples or otherwise choose very carefully what drawn or painted content he can share. This is despite me having proven that if you look hard enough you find porn and sexualised imagery of youths all over both Instagram and Facebook, and these with account names such as pornclip or some such. Here are some accounts I found within five minutes of searching… 

Well, I’m glad I made the hard decision to quit Meetup (and not give those woke arseholes any more of my money or traffic) prior to the removal of the Life Drawing Wales banner pic. But there is a positive…

I’m too hot, too sexy of course ;) and ANY image of me must be too arousing for those gentle souls at Meetup HQ.

Signing off… Porno Andy ;)