Instagram's sexist algorithm forcing women to change their gender to male

Many women took to their Instagram accounts to report about this sexist change

A recent trend has taken over Instagram. Many women have started to change their gender to male in their bio, in response to a sexist algorithm that started in April.

“We have begun reducing the spread of posts that are inappropriate but do not go against Instagram’s Community Guidelines, limiting those types of posts from being recommended on our Explore and hashtag pages,” explained Instagram.

Instagram, Facebook, Messenger down for users across the globe

"For example, a sexually suggestive post will still appear in the feed if you follow the account that posts it, but this type of content may not appear for the broader community in explore or hashtag pages.”

Despite the company’s claims, women found that this change to keep the social media platform a safe place impacted their online engagement.

However, once the gender in their bio changed their online engagement drastically improved.

Many women took to their Instagram account to report about this sexist change.

 

View this post on Instagram

Couple of days ago we reported a possible hack to increase engagement and beat the shadowban: changing your IG bio profile to ‘male’. (Instead of ‘female’ or ‘prefer not to say’). If you did, have you noticed any difference in the type of content Instagram shows you in your feed and Explore page? Let us know in comments. And yes, we still think it’s awful. Plus - stay tuned for our next shadowbanned user story coming soon...thank you ALL for being part of this equality-loving community!

A post shared by EveryBODYVisible (@everybodyvisible) on Nov 6, 2019 at 9:25am PST

 

Everybodyvisible wrote: “Several women dancers with access to Instagram business/creator account analytics have reported better engagement and visibility and less ban-action - by simply editing their profile & changing their bio to ‘MALE’ instead of ‘FEMALE’ (or ‘prefer not to say’)? And then continuing to post their usual content.

“Is it bizarrely less ‘inappropriate’ for a ‘male’ owned account to post ‘borderline’ content of women and femme-presenting bodies than the actual owner of the body THEMSELVES?”

One user wrote: “Changed mine a week ago and engagement has definitely gone up, gained lots of followers quite quickly even though I haven’t really posted in a while. Lots of my old videos seem to suddenly be showing in the explore page. This is so ridiculous and makes me so sad.”



Another added: “So I just changed mine to male on Saturday.. and my last post, although it’s stretching and not pole dancing, and it is now my #1 post and 76% of reach does not follow me..”

"We want to make sure the content we recommend to people on Instagram is safe and appropriate for everyone. Ensuring women feel heard is an essential part of that effort. Gender information from profiles has no impact on the content we filter from hashtags or the Explore page,” said  Facebook company spokesperson to Mirror Online.

This article originally published on Mirror UK.