Social Media

Wait 'Til You See the Picture Instagram Just Banned for Nudity

Former Staff Writer

May 20, 2014 2 min read

Perhaps Instagram should loosen up a bit. When it comes to celebs raring to bare a little skin, the image-sharing network has become particularly filter-happy of late -- frantically resorting to censorship like somebody’s scandalized grandmother.

First, Rihanna shuttered her infamously racy account in a huff -- abandoning more than 12 million followers -- after receiving admonitions from the site for posting a topless pic. Instead, she directed her fans to Twitter, where the shot lives on today.

More recently, when Australian pop star and Dancing With the Stars contestant Cody Simpson posted a shot of his naked butt to Instagram -- as well as to Facebook (which owns Instagram) -- it was promptly removed from both sites. “Looks like Instagram didn’t like my ass,” he tweeted.

But Instagram’s latest deletion seems to take its proclivity for censorship to even stranger heights. When Grace Coddington, the creative director of Vogue, shared a topless cartoon sketch she’d drawn over the weekend, her account was promptly suspended -- only to be reinstated days later following widespread outcry.

"When our team processes reports from other members of the Instagram community, we occasionally make a mistake,” Instagram told The Cut. “In this case, we wrongly removed content and worked to rectify the error as soon as we were notified."

Coddington, for her part took the incident in stride. Yesterday, she posted yet another sketch of her cat, legs akimbo, with a black bar censoring its privates. “Mother drew a nude selfie for her very first Instagram,” reads the caption. “No wonder they shut her down...she is much fatter than that."