I wrote this report September 19, 2025, and the B.A.R. editorial board followed up with an editorial based on it October 1, 2025.
Four queer San Francisco content creators and one in New York allege they were treated unfairly by social media giant Instagram. They said their accounts were restricted or even deleted under the auspices of rules around “sexually suggestive” content.
Three of the five told the Bay Area Reporter that Instagram alleged they were selling or buying sex through the platform – charges they say are baseless.
“What I was told flatly, directly, was that because my butt was in the photo, nudity constitutes the solicitation of sex,” said Cameron Cash, a gay man who runs the account @camofthecentury.
As the B.A.R. researched the issue for this article, more queer people and organizations came forward. Most recently, the Exiles, a storied San Francisco woman- and queer-centered educational Leather/BDSM organization, said its account was taken down last month entirely with no specific post cited, just as the city readies for the Folsom Street Fair.
Jesus Gutierrez, a gay man who is the co-founder of Yes Homo, a gay lifestyle brand, said the problem is so pervasive that “everyone who runs a queer business, I feel like, goes through this somehow, someway. It’s like a rite of passage, sadly.”
Another tactic the creators claim Instagram uses is so-called shadow banning, which refers to secretly hiding or downplaying content in user searches and algorithms without notifying the creators.
Niko Storment, a queer trans man who is production organizer for the San Francisco Trans March, said that the estimable annual event’s Instagram page was deleted the day after the 2024 iteration. (The Trans March takes place the Friday of Pride weekend.)
Storment runs the Trans March’s Instagram account @transmarch.
“We never engaged – I’ll be very clear – in any kind of sexual whatever,” Storment said. “A lot of my business dealings would happen through Instagram because I’d be hiring people based on their profiles.”
When Storment was using Instagram in helping organize a party at Public Works during Pride weekend 2024, Meta flagged a conversation with a queer creator, who wishes to remain anonymous, being hired for the party as Storment “hiring someone to do sex work” and shut down all his accounts, Storment said.
“Queer culture is often labeled as inherently sexual,” Storment said, adding that the shutdown on the Saturday of Pride weekend in 2024 hurt business – but also queer visibility and community building.
“Luckily, through our network, we had someone who worked at Meta who was able to send in a ticket item,” Storment said, adding it was “reversed by a real human.”
Storment stated there was no issue with the Trans March’s Instagram account this year.
SF queer nonprofit deplatformed
Kara Plaxa, a queer femme leather activist who is co-coordinator of the Exiles, told the B.A.R. that she was notified the group’s Instagram account was suspended on August 12.
“The only explanation provided was, ‘Too much activity on your account that doesn’t follow our Community Standards,’” Plaxa stated, quoting the Meta message, which the B.A.R. viewed. “No specific content or posts were flagged, and importantly, all but one of the same posts remain available and compliant on Facebook.”
Plaxa stated the Exiles filed an appeal. But two days later, Meta decided to permanently disable the account.
“No one from Meta reached out directly,” Plaxa stated. “The only communication we received were automated notices inside the app. The first said our account had ‘too much activity’ and didn’t follow community standards. After appealing, we got a final message that Meta ‘reviewed the content and still found it to be in violation.’ At no point were we told what specific post or content was the issue.”
Plaxa continued, “Our community lost 80% of our media reach in a single month.”
“That’s not an accident,” Plaxa stated. “That’s erasure. Instagram was how we reached about 77,000 people with education on consent, queer history, and BDSM skills around power dynamics. … We’re not just teaching BDSM skills. You’ll find us at protests and inside San Francisco City Hall, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow community members, fighting together.”
Plaxa gave as an example the recent protest activity over the former Compton’s Cafeteria site in the Tenderloin. Plaxa claims Meta-owned Facebook has shadow banned The Exiles’ account.
Nightlife promoter affected
West Walker is a gay nightlife promoter who readers may remember won the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s Hunky Jesus contest at Mission Dolores Park during the drag philanthropic group’s Easter party earlier this year. He runs the Instagram account @truckdoesdisco for the eponymously named night at The Stud, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. Walker said that Truck’s Instagram was deleted for a time last November for a picture that featured four men in Speedos, one in a jock strap, and one of the men’s hands on another’s back.
“It wasn’t sexual,” Walker said. “We’d definitely posted more scandalous things than that, but that is what we got pulled for and flagged.”
Walker said he “had to create a brand new account, and we’ve been following the guidelines and haven’t posted anything anywhere near as scandalous.”
But then, in the spring, his connected personal account was disabled because his personal account shared a post months earlier from the initial Truck account that he’d been tagged in but that had later been “flagged as inappropriate.” Asked what the post was of, Walker said it “showed half a butt cheek.”
Walker decided to try to get in touch with Meta Support. When he did, he was told that “even just sharing something I had been tagged in was violating community guidelines,” he said. (He said he no longer has the emails.)
“That just did not make sense,” he continued. “I started keeping a file every time I see content I think violates community guidelines. I started taking screenshots of those and I’ve got 10, at least, of female content creators showing full areolas, in some cases full vaginas.”
Walker still operates with limits on his accounts. He can’t monetize his accounts or use the live feature that allows a webcast. He said that on average, there’s been a 75% drop in viewers on Truck’s posts, which he attributes to shadow banning.
“My mom is a Southern Baptist minister’s wife, and I wouldn’t put anything I wouldn’t want her to see,” he said.
Instagram, owned by Menlo Park-based Meta, which also owns Facebook, Threads, and Whats App, didn’t return a request for comment for this report.
Meta also didn’t return a request to comment on the particular cases.
Paige Collings, a queer person who’s a senior speech and privacy activist at San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the B.A.R. that these tactics are all too common.
“When we’re talking about LGBTQ content creators and queer content online, what we’re talking about is an algorithmic silencing of this content,” Collings said. “We know – particularly over the past two years, and especially since November of last year – that we’ve seen a proliferation of censorship of LGBTQ content. The first way is an intentional censoring of content: algorithms say it’s harmful for children, or depicts nudity. The other part is shadow banning, which is difficult to track and less predictable.”
Collings said that when someone is shadow banned, “the algorithm is tracking [the account] for a specific reason, so that the account is not promoted in the same way other content would be if it were about, say, erectile dysfunction instead of queer rights.”
Either way, “there is censorship of this content, regardless of the mechanism,” Collings said.
Instagram’s policies
Cash said that “Instagram does not claim shadow banning is real.”
“However, they do limit the reach of certain posts algorithmically via hashtags and AI,” he said, referring to artificial intelligence.
Instagram’s posted policy on its website is that it has “Community Standards that define what’s allowed in order to keep Instagram an authentic and safe place for inspiration and expression. If we’re made aware of a post that goes against our Community Standards, we’ll remove it from Instagram. While some posts on Instagram may not go against our Community Standards, they might not be appropriate for our global community, and we’ll limit those types of posts from being recommended in places like Explore and search results.”
The policy continued that, “For example, a sexually suggestive post will still appear in Feed if you follow the account that posts it, but this type of content may not appear for the broader community in Explore and search results.”
The Community Standards proscribe adult sexual exploitation; child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity; and adult sexual solicitation and sexually-explicit language.
Multiple media outlets have reported in the past that Instagram has unfairly targeted LGBTQ content for removal and shadow banning.
Last year, LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD reported in its Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) that, “LGBTQ content is disproportionately censored via removal, shadow banning, demonetization, or ‘graphic content’ overlays” on Instagram, which it called “part of a larger, troubling trend” that is “is particularly upsetting in light of Meta’s failures to mitigate the vast amount of hate-fueled and violent content that researchers say Meta has allowed to proliferate across its platforms.”
This year’s social media report, which GLAAD released in May, blasted Meta for changes in its “Hateful Conduct” policy.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this year a loosening of the rules over hate speech and abuse on the platforms – which include Facebook and Instagram – citing “recent elections,” the Associated Press reported. Zuckerberg also dropped fact-checking in favor of a “Community Notes” system similar to what X installed after Elon Musk purchased the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022.
As part of the policy changes at Meta, it clarified in its community standards that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.'”
The 2025 GLAAD report stated, “Meta should remove these harmful exceptions from its ‘Hateful Conduct’ policy and provide LGBTQ people with strong protections against hate, harassment, and violence on its platforms.”
EFF’s Collings said it’s ironic that Meta is uplifting homophobic and transphobic content while silencing LGBTQ accounts.
“There’s a proliferation of hateful content being shared on these platforms,” Collings said. “If we look at Meta’s revision of community standards, it’s permitted content that would’ve previously been swept up as transphobic and homophobic, and this was done with the intent of increasing freedom of speech, that the conversation offline should be able to happen online. Unfortunately for queer people, for trans people, a lot of content that is discriminatory and offensive is now being promoted on these platforms. That change really did underlie an evisceration we’ve been seeing for a long time of protections for queer content creators.”
Asked about the matter, a GLAAD spokesperson stated to the B.A.R., “The LGBTQ community not only faces outsized levels of online hate and harassment, we also experience disproportionate content removals and censorship.”
“Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and shadow banning,” the spokesperson continued. “As noted in the SMSI, Meta and other platforms must strengthen and enforce (or restore) policies that protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation, and also from suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.”
The spokesperson also stated that Meta isn’t following best practices around transparency for content creators, that users sometimes feel a sense of total helplessness when promulgated rules about how to appeal aren’t followed, and that often people at the company can’t be reached.
A 2021 University of Michigan study found that, “moderation algorithms appear to flag queer content more than non-queer content” on the platform.
Shadow banned
Cash said he noticed he was shadow banned a month ago when his user name became harder to find in the search function.
“When you put in my username, ‘camofthecentury,’ usually you put ‘camofthe’ and mine would come up. There’s not many user names that start that way. A month ago, I noticed I had to put in the entire username,” he said.
Instagram claimed he was soliciting sex after it took down a photo of Cash tied from behind in multi-colored ropes. Some of his buttocks are visible on the right side of the photo.
“What I was told flatly, directly, was that because my butt was in the photo, nudity constitutes the solicitation of sex,” Cash said. “That was a shock. It made me take a huge step back.”
In a text discussion between Cash and Meta Support viewed by the B.A.R., Cash stated, “There is no seeking or offering of sexual favors,” and in response Meta Support stated, “Actually, as per system, nudity falls under sexual solicitation. But I do understand what you are trying to say.”
Despite the acknowledgement, Cash is still shadow banned.
He told the B.A.R. that Meta “can just say whatever they want,” adding the matter is “incredibly discouraging because I invest so much time and effort into that account – not to make money, but to create content I feel uplifts the community,” such as about self-love and spirituality.
“I just don’t understand,” he lamented. “Knots on the back and Instagram took it down with the claim the photo depicted a sex act.”
Gutierrez runs one of Instagram’s hottest LGBTQ brands, with over 36,000 followers, selling “chaotic. Fun. s*xy. apparel” and posting thoughts on gay and queer identity interspersed with beefcake pictures featuring the brand’s clothes. He said Yes Homo was suspended February 1. (The B.A.R. viewed a screenshot of the suspension and an alleged violation for “encouraging sexual activities.”)
“We share content that’s very sex-positive and sexually free, and Instagram, for some reason, it’s mostly AI moderation tools, decided to take down a lot of our content,” Gutierrez said, referring to artificial intelligence. “In February, they suspended our full account. We are trying to build community above all, and it’s the backbone of our business, so it’s a bad position to be in.”
Luckily for Gutierrez, he was “able to be in touch with someone at Meta – I know that’s a real privilege – and once they manually reversed, they reinstated” his account in three days.
When his account was reinstated after the internal ticket review, all the records of previous violations were also cleared, giving the account a clean slate.
Asked what reason Meta had given, Gutierrez told the B.A.R. that Meta stated he was violating rules around sexual solicitation, citing a post about how the company was “for homos, by homos.”
“Like our community,” Gutierrez explained, “which is obviously not sexual solicitation.”
One T-shirt of New York City LGBTQ venues was flagged as “promoting dangerous organizations.” The B.A.R. viewed a screenshot of the allegation.
“It just says ‘NYC Gay’ and on the back has a list of the queer bars in New York City,” he said. “It was really tame. It was someone wearing the shirt with a jock strap on. It’s inconsistent because I’ve seen bare butts before” on Instagram.
Asked how it has impacted his business, Gutierrez stated that while he doesn’t have hard data, “It’s been a toll on our mental health.”
“I know that sounds silly,” he added, “but the first thing I do when I wake up is make sure our account wasn’t taken down overnight. When things are taken down it just prohibits our growth, because a lot of the content we post is shareable.”
Meta paid money to Trump after election win
Walker, the nightlife promoter, connects the more challenging environment for queer content creators to the resurgence in right-wing politics in recent years, saying Meta had not been as stringent in the past.
Shortly before the interview with Walker, Zuckerberg was caught on a hot mic – after saying Meta would be investing $600 billion into the U.S. – saying to President Donald Trump that he wasn’t “sure what number [announced dollar figure] you wanted to go with.”
Zuckerberg was a guest of honor at Trump’s inauguration January 20, and Meta gave $1 million to help fund the event, shortly before the company loosened the rules around “hateful conduct.”
Then-President Joe Biden had called out Meta’s changes during his January 15 farewell address to the nation, in the section in which he warned about an “oligarchy taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom,” and a “tech-industrial complex.”
Zuckerberg had claimed on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Biden White House officials would “call up the guys on our team and yell at them … cursing and threatening repercussions if we [didn’t] take down things that [were] true.”
Meta agreed to pay $25 million to Trump personally as part of a legal settlement over his suspensions on Instagram and Facebook in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Of the settlement, $22 million will go toward Trump’s presidential library.
John Ferrannini 