In an AW25 collection dedicated to “bad taste”, the designer Duran Lantink sent a male model down the catwalk in a pair of fake, silicone breasts. More recently, at his debut show as creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier, the designer went in for round two with an irreverent parade of anatomical skinsuits. Both shows were among the more hotly-debated moments of their respective fashion seasons, throwing up a bunch of conceptual questions. Was Lantink making a statement about human, and especially women’s, bodies? Or was he using female-presenting bodies as a cheap punchline? Was there some even deeper meaning? If so, what was the deeper meaning? There was lots of conversation, and yet no sign of a clear consensus.

At the same time, though, another kind of debate raged in the shadows. Not a debate between humans, but machines: how to mediate Duran Lantink’s antics? More specifically, what to do with the images and videos that proliferate after his shows? Since 2008, Meta’s censorship policy has banned images of nudity – including, controversially, nipples – across platforms like Instagram and Facebook. These rules are enforced by thousands of human moderators and, of course, AI. But in 2015, the company updated its guidelines to allow exceptions for nudity shared in an artistic context. 

If a pair of bare fake boobs is strapped to a model and paraded down a catwalk, does that constitute an act of artistic expression? says one algorithm to the other. How is it different from an OnlyFans model sharing a topless selfie? It’s difficult to know how a well-meaning algorithm should proceed: a straight-up ban of the offending account, a ‘shadow-ban’ (which quietly limits their interactions with other users) or a mere warning. Is it enough to hide the image behind a ‘sensitive content’ screen? Does it need to be pulled from the platform altogether?

These questions can get pretty deep, pretty fast, requiring nuance and compassion (qualities that are sorely lacking in your average algorithm). Like: what kind of fashion falls under the umbrella of ‘art’? What makes one body pornographic, and another simply nude? And why are we still litigating the distinction between men’s and women’s nipples, all these years after the debate first hit the mainstream?

You wouldn’t know it, given the lack of answers, but we’ve been grappling with all of these questions for a long time. Think, for example, of the eight-year legal dispute between Facebook and a French school teacher that ran from 2011 to 2019, over an image of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting “L’Origine du monde” – a realistic rendition of a woman’s vulva and abdomen. After the teacher’s account was shut down by the social platform for sharing an image of the painting, he tried to sue them for infringing on his freedom of expression, and it was eventually ruled that Facebook made the wrong call. A similar controversy occurred in 2016, when Facebook flip-flopped about its decision to censor Nick Ut’s famous “napalm girl” photo, despite the fact it’s regarded as one of the most important historical works of photojournalism.

Of course, the censorship of erotic art goes back even further than the early days of the social media. Back in the 1950s, Tom of Finland had to disseminate his hypersexualised male portraits in beefcake magazines dedicated to showcasing ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’ bodies – for educational purposes, of course! – to get around homophobic laws. Other artists that have rubbed up against IRL content restrictions, in one way or another, range from Madonna to Robert Mapplethorpe to Arvida Byström. The problem is: the internet was supposed to open up new avenues for these kinds of artists to share their art. In practice, things are looking as stifled as ever.

In July 2025, the UK introduced new online ‘safety’ rules that require users to submit to age verification checks to access sites that contain NSFW material. These checks – which reflect similar policies being rolled out across the globe – could include handing over passport or credit card information, or scanning your face with age-estimating software. Far from protecting younger users, though, many experts have warned that these systems can drive them toward more niche and “extreme” sites that haven’t bothered to comply with the laws. Potentially, they also violate people’s right to free expression and opportunities for safe, anonymous education. That’s if they’re even effective: some VPNs, which can be used to get around these checks, saw a reported 1,800 per cent increase in downloads a few days after the law was brought into effect.

As creative director of the Tom of Finland Foundation, Richard Villani has experienced the tightening of online censorship firsthand. “A couple of months ago, I got a notice from Instagram about an image from two or three years ago, from our art and culture festival, that they were removing because of community standards,” he tells Dazed. “I found that interesting. I don’t know if someone reported it, or somehow the algorithm picked it up.” 

This, of course, is part of the problem: social media’s censorship systems are difficult to understand. The words used in their guidelines are vague and open to interpretation (like Tumblr allowing “nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes” but not “sexually explicit acts”), and the algorithms that enforce them are totally opaque. Villani remembers another situation where he was explaining to the photographer Nick Knight that the Tom of Finland Foundation is perpetually “shadowbanned” on Instagram. “He was like, ‘What is that?’” Villani says. The resulting conversation led to the collaborative 2024 exhibition titled Shadow-Ban, full of NSFW works that wouldn’t last two minutes online. However, it’s not a great sign of the times when artists don’t understand the limitations of the systems that are supposed to help them share their work – when conversations about what’s permissible take place in private, or in an algorithmic ‘black box’.

In the UK, many take the recent introduction of age verification requirements as evidence that things are only getting worse for artists online. That is, by requiring users to hand over their intimate details in order to view ‘adult’ content, users are less likely to interact with the work of already-struggling creatives. This gets even worse if you consider that social media sites tend to disproportionately target content featuring female-presenting, Black, and LGBTQ+ bodies, via algorithms that “reinforce our biased social systems” and the personal beliefs of their creators.

“The internet promised freedom,” says the feminist filmmaker and porn producer Erika Lust. “But in many ways, it has reproduced the same old gatekeeping that has always controlled what stories are told and how they’re represented.” 

To be fair, Lust’s work falls pretty squarely on the ‘porn’ side of the ‘is it porn or erotic art?’ conversation, at least as far as a social media algorithm is concerned. But this raises another interesting problem: who gets to decide what’s porn and what’s not? “The distinction is artificial – and deeply political... who decides that a painting of the nude Venus is ‘art’ but a video of a naked woman experiencing real pleasure is ‘porn’ and therefore dangerous?” she says. “These aren’t neutral decisions; they reflect centuries of power, patriarchy, and cultural prejudice. For centuries, the male gaze has defined what was ‘art’ and what was ‘obscene.’”

This brings us back to “L’Origine du Monde” by Courbet. “[It was] hidden away in private collections for over a hundred years because it was considered indecent,” Lust adds, illustrating the fickleness of the male gaze. “And today, that same painting is celebrated in the Musée d’Orsay. Meanwhile, contemporary photographers or filmmakers showing authentic female desire are deleted off Instagram.”

These platforms allow violence, harassment, and misogyny to circulate freely, but a nipple is a threat

In this sense, tech platforms often perpetuate regressive ideas about who gets to express themselves and how (which is ironic, given the tendency of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others to lecture others about the importance of free speech). Consciously or not, they support the attack on trans rights and pushback against ‘woke’ thought we see proliferating worldwide, while squashing alternative perspectives. The result? A creative environment that’s “precarious, exhausting, and often unfair”.

Lust adds: “They silence women, queer creators, and artists working at the edges of culture – the very people we most need to hear from.” It’s also unclear why platforms like Instagram or X feed people gory fight videos and footage of hate rallies, but harshly penalise a human body posed at an angle they deem NSFW. “These platforms allow violence, harassment, and misogyny to circulate freely,” she continues, “but a nipple is a threat.”

There are artists who have found workarounds to social media censorship, of course. In 2024, for example, the Estonian artist and rapper Tommy Cash published the music video for his single “UNTZ UNTZ” on Pornhub, citing a social media clampdown on nudity and “inappropriate content” as the inspiration. Other artists, and even museums, have defected to platforms like OnlyFans in the past, and continue to leave for alternative platforms.

“I’ll see a post at least once a week saying, ‘I’m leaving Instagram, I’m going to Bluesky,’” says Villani. “I would say no more than two weeks go by that I don’t see an artist having an issue. And they’ll show the image, and it’s a silhouette or something, something that’s not, to me, erotic in content.”

“Obviously, a lot of the artists I know have been dealing with this for years,” he adds. “And they’re learning how to navigate it, whether it’s joining different platforms or having an email list.” For many artists, though, this can involve leaving behind an audience that’s been built up over many years. Meanwhile, the ones who stay behind have to make a different kind of sacrifice, “directly managing” their content so that it flies under the radar. They might scribble out a nipple in a photograph, place an emoji over a bare bum, or even change the kind of content they create at a more fundamental level, to make it ‘less erotic’. In many cases, this also means losing the creative spark – like Lantink’s nudes, or a particularly provocative Tom of Finland sketch – that ignites interesting conversations on the internet about what we find acceptable and why. As the legacy of artists like Tom of Finland have shown, these conversations can lay the groundwork for significant social and political shifts in the future.

Few people believe that underage internet users should be able to access hardcore pornography; even fewer believe they should have it algorithmically delivered to their social media feeds. However, social media platforms are both failing to cut this kind of content – see: reports that TikTok recommends porn to children – and using it as a “scapegoat” to suppress more thoughtful, creative and progressive types of erotic art.

Ultimately, says Lust, it’s a mistake to put the decision-making in the hands of Big Tech companies, especially when they outsource it to algorithms that can’t grasp the nuances of human sexuality. So what’s the alternative? “We need transparent, democratic standards created in collaboration with artists, activists, educators, and diverse voices around the world,” she suggests. “Because in the end, eroticism is culture. Sexuality is part of the human experience.”

In the end, eroticism is culture. Sexuality is part of the human experience 

In the meantime, she has some advice for artists who expect to collide with social media censorship, sooner or later. “First, protect yourself, with backups, multiple accounts, and platforms that respect your content,” she says. “Second, build your own audience outside of Big Tech: mailing lists, independent websites, collaborations with like-minded communities. Don’t depend on Instagram to be your gallery, because it can vanish in an instant. It has for me, time and time again. Third, stay true to your vision. Censorship wants to make you doubt yourself, to internalize shame. Resist that. Your work matters. Erotic expression is human expression, and the world needs your voice. Finally, find allies – other artists, activists, sex educators. Together, you’re stronger, louder, harder to erase.”