A lot of people – particularly sex workers & sexuality professionals – are boycotting Instagram tomorrow. If you haven't heard about this at all, here's some context: https://www.ftpeopleusa.org/news/opinion-instagram-censorship

Personally, I'm not participating in the boycott. Instagram has already made it clear that they're willing to do without sex-positive content creators, sexuality professionals, & sex workers by arbitrarily disabling those accounts. I don't think they'll notice/care tomorrow.

It feels like a boycott that is ultimately in service of Instagram's goals. It's a full day where people won't be uploading the exact content Instagram hates so much. A day where sex workers won't be promoting their clips/OF/services, which takes people's attention off site.

For people with large audiences and/or digital businesses, that's less people using our discount codes or buying from our online shops. That means not posting sponsored content. I don't think that helps. I see the most traffic to my account on Sundays.

So I just don't think boycotting helps. I'm also thinking of #StopHateForProfit, a boycott that just happened earlier this year.

Civil rights groups wanted to push FB to address the volume of hate speech & misinformation on their platform.

They got 1200+ advertisers, including Ben & Jerry's, Chobani, and Pfizer, to stop paying for ads (or to scale down) for an entire month. On June 26th, shortly after Verizon announced their participation, the share price of Facebook dropped by 8.3%.

Advertisers are ultimately who Facebook answers to so this seemed like an effective boycott. Even still, FB's overall ad revenue *increased* that July. Because they have 500 million daily users & are so huge, they make money regardless of any one group's participation.

This should make you angry at the financial & social power tech companies have. This should cause you to research projects like @project_solid, @blockstack, & @joinmastadon. Maybe even make accounts there!

This is something @cameronglover_ has been saying a lot this week: right now is the time to build a personal brand off Instagram, to put work into a personal website or build community on a private server. Use Instagram to push your audience over there.

But when it comes to boycotting Instagram, some folks won't even notice ya'll doing that. Instagram's hell algorithm already hides sex positive accounts & content. And many people aren't daily Instagram users to begin with.

For another perspective on this, Donna the Domme made this excellent post, which points out that this should be an opportunity to share information about sex worker activism & the nordic model:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CI83MbdnX2w/ 

And @BitchThatTalks made the point that not many Black sexuality professionals & sex workers have even advocated for a boycott, which leaves only the most marginalized people discussing this issue tomorrow:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CI_LhNeF712/ 

I feel really grateful for those posts because they let me know I'm not the only one who doesn't see the point in a boycott. And I see a lot of white people defensive about their boycott, I'm not rly trying to come at ya'll. It's just not what I'm finna do.

What we really need to be doing tomorrow is hopping on Clubhouse bc I have had some very tasty conversations over there AND I hear Young MA just made an account soooooo. Eye am just saying.