Everyone should feel they have the right to express themselves offline or online as far as it doesn’t directly harm people. However, big tech platforms like Instagram and Facebook have hammered down on censorship of content, which they feel “doesn’t fit with their rules and regulations”.

When it comes to sexual expression, content has been outright removed from these platforms — leaving little to no room for sex workers, artists, and regular people to promote their content. Not until now, with the new social platform Lips.

Here are a few random facts about sexual content online:

** Tumblrs user base dropped by 20% in 2019 after banning its porn content in 2018.

** Despite Bella Thorpe (US actress/singer) earning over one million dollars in 24 hours using OnlyFans, the average users only make around $180/month.

** The social commerce market value is over 30 billion dollars.

What is Lips?

Lips is a social platform that allows content creators to post content without fear of censorship, regardless of race, identity and all that stuff. Anne Brown (they/them), who is the founder (a US entrepreneur), and “their” team wanted to create a platform for freedom of expression.

I decided to test it out and found the platform overall simple and straight to the point. Firstly, it’s a web app, which means you can’t download it from the Apple or Google Play store due to strict regulations. Secondly, navigating the platform didn’t feel like jumping through hoops either. Users have to approve they are over 18+, then select a list of filters to view content they would like to see, such as #art #bodypositive and my favourite #bannedoninstagram.

Non-binary artist Arkanoii produces content on lips and Instagram.

Though Lips didn’t have a comment feature which felt strange at first, it did reduce a lot of the clutter you tend to see on platforms anyway. Each content provider had a profile with a bio description and links to their other social networks and websites if they wanted to share more, which was neat.

You, you, but not you!

Censorship is a huge problem — (an article I wrote about this). It has always been an issue, but since the last few years, it has been a lot more worrisome.

Take Tumblr, for example, in 2018; they decided to remove all adult content from their platform regardless of it being porn or anything akin to it in a digital art form.

Most recently, Instagram has been shadow-banning content they feel does not match their platform guidelines. Shadow-banning is when you reduce the number of people that can see specific content. It has happened to me and various others.

If you post a boob, you’re getting the boot.

The problem here is though Instagram say they are taking a stance on sexual content by banning users, they feel comfortable keeping other content. Like racist pages, sexual abuse and graphic content such as someones head blown off. They’re pretty content keeping Playboy’s Instagram page open, but they will censor, for example, an Afro-Latina content creator who posts digital art to fund her college degree. So it’s this “pick and choose” habit they adopt.

The branching off on social media

Are we heading to an era of social media users branching off into more niche segments? Perhaps. If the fury of both right and left-wing users and the exiled users is anything to go by, it shows that big tech is failing to be this open to all place.

My prediction is in the coming decade, we’ll start to see more platforms created to provide a safe haven for those who feel their mic is being muted or unplugged. Maybe the creation of new decentralized platforms powered by cryptocurrencies to enable a faster, cheaper, and smoother e-commerce experience.

People don’t feel free online, regardless of which side of the fence they stand, and the next challenge for companies will be creating platforms where censorship is a thing of the past.