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this is interesting as fuck
“I’m really interested in algorithmic enforcement …” Ada Ada Ada told me in an interview. “It seemed like the nipple rule is one of the simplest ways … because it’s set up as a very binary idea—female nipples no, male nipples, yes. But then it prompts a lot of questions: what is male nipple? What is a female nipple?”
She’s using her own journey as a trans person to document how AI tools like those used by Instagram identify potentially obscene material.
New passing meta just dropped
We really live in somebody’s dystopian fiction. Life imitates art.
sign up to keep reading
No, no I don’t think I will
Isn’t it free?
It’s annoying, but at least this is an independent, worker owned 4 man outfit that got its start when Vice went bankrupt.
Here is the article:
For the past two years an algorithmic artist who goes by Ada Ada Ada has been testing the boundaries of human and automated moderation systems on various social media platforms by documenting her own transition.
Every week she uploads a shirtless self portrait to Instagram alongside another image which shows whether a number of AI-powered tools from big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft that attempt to automatically classify the gender of a person see her as male or female. Each image also includes a sequential number, year, and the number of weeks since Ada Ada Ada started hormone therapy.
In 2023, after more than a year into the project which she named In Transitu, Instagram removed one of Ada Ada Ada’s self portraits for violating Instagram’s Community Guidelines against posting nudity. We can’t say for certain why Instagram deleted that image specifically and whether it was a human or automated system that flagged it because Meta’s moderation systems remain opaque, but it was at that moment that Instagram first decided that Ada Ada Ada’s nipples were female, and therefore nudity, which isn’t allowed on the platform. On Instagram, shirtless men are allowed and shirtless women are also allowed as long as they don’t show nipples, so what constitutes nudity online often comes down to the perceived gender of an areola.
“I’m really interested in algorithmic enforcement and generally understanding the impact that algorithms have on our lives,” Ada Ada Ada told me in an interview. “It seemed like the nipple rule is one of the simplest ways that you can start talking about this because it’s set up as a very binary idea—female nipples no, male nipples, yes. But then it prompts a lot of questions: what is male nipple? What is a female nipple?”
In Transitu highlights the inherent absurdity in how Instagram and other big tech companies try to answer that question.
“A lot of artists have been challenging this in various ways, but I felt like I had started my transition at the end of 2021 and I also started my art practice. And I was like, well, I’m actually in a unique position to dive deep into this by using my own body,” Ada Ada Ada said. “And so I wanted to see how Instagram and the gender classification algorithms actually understand gender. What are the rules? And is there any way that we can sort of reverse engineer this?”
While we can’t know exactly why any one of Ada Ada Ada’s images are removed, she is collecting as much data as she can in a spreadsheet about which images were removed, why Instagram said they were removed, and to the best of her knowledge if the images’ reach was limited.

That data shows that more images were removed further into her transition, but there are other possible clues as well. In the first image that was removed, for example, Ada Ada Ada was making a “kissy face” and squeezing her breasts together, which could have read as more female or sexual. Ada Ada Ada was also able to reupload that same image with the nipples censored out. In another image that was removed, she said, she was wearing a lingerie bra where her nipples were still visible.
“But then again, you have this one where I’m wearing nipple clamps, and that didn’t do anything,” she said. “I would have expected that to be removed. I’ve also had another picture where I’m holding up a book, Nevada by the trans author Imogen Binnie. I’m just holding a book and that was removed.”
Ada Ada Ada also maintains a spreadsheet where she tracks how a number of AI-powered gender classifiers—Face++, face-api.js, Microsoft Azure’s Image Analysis, Amazon Rekognition, and Clarifai—are reading her as male or female.

Experts have criticized such gender classifiers for often being wrong and particularly harmful for transgender people. “You can’t actually tell someone’s gender from their physical appearance,” Os Keyes, a researcher at the University of Washington who has written a lot about automated gender recognition (AGR), wrote for Logic in 2019. “If you try, you’ll just end up hurting trans and gender non-conforming people when we invariably don’t stack up to your normative idea of what gender ‘looks like.’”
“I’ve definitely learned that gender classifiers are an unreliable and flawed technology, especially when it comes to trans people’s gender expression,” Ada Ada Ada said. “I regularly see my algorithmic gender swing back and forth from week to week. In extension to that, it’s also fascinating to see how the different algorithms often disagree on my gender. Face++ (which is a Chinese company) tends to disagree more with the others, which seems to suggest that it’s also a culturally dependent technology (as is gender).”
As Ada Ada Ada told me, and as I wrote in another story published today, continually testing these classifiers also reveals how they work in reality versus how the companies that own them say they work. In 2022, well into her project, Microsoft said it would retire its gender classifier following criticism that the technology can be used for discrimination. But Ada Ada Ada was able to continue using the gender classifier well after Microsoft said it would retire it. It was only after I reached out to Microsoft for comment that it learned that she and what Microsoft said was a “very small number” of users were still able to access it because of an error. Microsoft denied them access after I reached out for comment.
Another thing that In Transitu reveals is that, on paper, Instagram has a plain policy against nudity. It states:
“We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or an act of protest are allowed.”
But in reality, Instagram ends up removing content and accounts belonging to adult content creators, sex educators, and gender nonconforming people who are trying to follow its stated rules, while people who steal adult content or create nonconsensual content game the system and post freely. As 404 Media has shown many times, nonconsensual content is also advertised on Instagram, meaning the platform is getting paid to show it to users. It’s not surprising that trying to follow the rules is hard when users struggle to reverse engineer how those rules are actually enforced, and nonsensical for people who don’t fit into old, binary conceptions of gender.
I make an exception for one of the best tech outlets
Ya it’ll be a cold day in hell before Instagram requires men to hide their nipples. Just shows how ingrained America’s views on sex, sexuality and gender are in Christianity.
Christian tradition, sure, but the Bible doesn’t have much to say about nipples so any specific rule regarding them seems to be more of an inference than a command.
I read once that it had more to do with not seeing wealthy women’s nipples. For example wealthy women would hire a wet nurse to breast feed their babies. It was a way to show off wealth and social standing. So the hired help in the form of a wet nurse could show her breasts, but her wealthy employer would not because its beneath her.
So not showing breasts, even for the purpose of breast feeding became affiliated with wealth and power, whereas the inverse was true, showing breasts meant you could not afford to keep them covered.
And that’s not even including the influence of brothels and prostitution.
Let that cook for however many hundreds of years, mix in religion and you get whatever the fuck we have now.
It was an interesting theory and seemed to make sense to me. I’ll have to try to find the article later. I read it maybe 10 years ago so it might take some looking.
The Wikipedia article says historically wet nursing was available to all social classes, so that doesn’t really jive.
The Bible stopped being a real guide for American Christians the moment they landed on our coast
Technically correct, because they weren’t “American” before they landed.
They abandoned the Bible as a real guide long before that, though.
Isn’t the constitution the New New Testament.
Doesn’t stop them from using it as the “reason” for several rules
Ah yes, and then uses Jesus’ name in the same sentence as USA. The guy hated capitalism more than anything.
What does the pope have to say about nipples? I’ve seen some in Christian art (didn’t touch myself to these, just in case), but didn’t realize there was an opinion on this?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:
The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person." (C.C.C. # 2524)
People here are not serious, they repeat slogans and polemics very superficially. The nipple taboo is found across pre-Christian and non-Abrahamic societies, probably because of breasts’ association with fertility. I.e
When did bare breasts become taboo in Western civilization?
Probably around 3,000 years ago. Women are displayed with exposed breasts in Minoan artwork from 1500 B.C. Some historians believe that these ancient women went topless only during religious rituals—bare-breasted, buxom goddesses have been worshipped since the dawn of civilization—but some of the artworks depict everyday activities, suggesting that bare breasts may have been commonplace. Just across the Mediterranean, ancient Egyptian women sported elaborate dresses that could either cover the breasts or leave them exposed, depending on the whim of the designer. Over the next few centuries, however, breasts become strictly private parts. Ancient Athenian women were wearing flowing, multilayered robes that concealed the shape of the bosom by the middle of the first millennium B.C. Spartan attire was more risqué, exposing the female thigh, but breasts were always covered.
Small boobies = nipple ok
Big boobies = nipple not ok
Is what I think this Instagram is trying to say. I don’t agree and think let the boobies be free.
Would that mean censorship of moobs?
If women’s nipples are censored because they are considered sexual, men’s should be too. I know more than a few women who are sexuality aroused by topless men.
Why ban male nipples? Fuck that all nipples should be allowed.
That’s my point.
I was wondering but I guess I don’t understand why say it that way instead of the other way around.
To highlight the absurdity of the concept. I think the three majority of people would agree that topless men should not be censored.
Gonna make a novelty insta devoted to hairy male nipples
Bet it can beat Tik Tok to a congressional ban
If you need some hairy male nipples to show off then let me know, I’ll contribute to the cause 😂
They’d love Newcastle https://www.taps-aff.co.uk/
Do you have like a list or anything? Friend wants to know.
tits out for harambe
Huh, I was honestly expecting something like https://youtube.com/watch?v=dcYlytyuKsc
… Because it all becomes Crab?
“I’ve definitely learned that gender classifiers are an unreliable and flawed technology, especially when it comes to trans people’s gender expression,” Ada Ada Ada said. “I regularly see my algorithmic gender swing back and forth from week to week.
Says the person changing themselves week to week to fit different classifications?
Precisely.
Gender isn’t binary, there is no such thing as a male or female nipple. That distinction is something that Humans made up.
To the extent that men can lactate! It’s one of the possible side effects of risperdal, which I have to be aware of because I give it fairly regularly.
This got me curious whether the milk would be any different and, if I’m reading this study correctly, there’s practically no difference in content
Said study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7462406/
In 2024? Why? Risperdal is such a blunt instrument with respect to its broad affinity for receptors.
Dude sometimes we still give thorazine. And tbh ime the 3rd gens don’t do shit for my typical patient. For context also though, I’m essentially providing ICU level care, so when you say the word “symptom control” it’s often referring to like, fists.
We had a Lady maxxed on Haldol BID one time and she managed to cheek for a week and eventually she just hauled off and rapid fire punched a nurse in the head three times. She legit thought a man was entering through her window every night on a beam of light to forcibly impregnate her and deliver the baby. She kept demanding to see the 50 babies she had up on L&D from the past few months. I’ve actually seen quite a few pregnancy delusions and they’re almost always completely wild psychosis. Another was such an angry manic but high insight enough that when she couldn’t take it anymore she would just come scream at me for the thorazine.
I’m unsure if you don’t work inpatient psychiatry or you just work somewhere significantly classier than I do. I also work in an inner city area that’s flush with people stuck in a cycle of drugs / homelessness so I’m also not going to tell you that any of this is the best solution, just that it’s the only one avaliable to any of us right now.
ICU level care
Acute care, understood.
referring to like, fists.
i.e. “I need Olanzapine [broad receptor affinity, highly anti-cholinergic, well-tolerated], but, like, faster.” I’m surprised that particular aspect of the side effect profile comes into play with acute usage.
I’m unsure if you don’t work inpatient psychiatry or you just work somewhere significantly classier than I do.
Ah, yes, this happens a lot. No, I don’t work in the medical field at all. I just know things, for reasons.
I do work in an inner city area that’s flush with people stuck in a cycle of drugs / homelessness
i.e. the psychosis has done so much cumulative damage at this point that you need to fall back to the typicals. That explains why the third-gens are useless.
On a different note, have you heard about Cobenfy yet?
It obviously isn’t suited to the needs of your practice. But I’m really glad we’re making progress on alternative treatment approaches, especially novel ones like anti-muscarinics.
Hopefully the new glutamatergics can reach your setting soon.
I don’t understand this. We have two genders, how is it not binary and how is it made up? Honest question.
I’ll take this as a good faith question, and the short answer is that gender is a lot more complicated than that.
Yes there are two archetypal roles involved in sexual reproduction, but even that isn’t so simple. There isn’t just one feature that defines male or female, but a combination of traits including chromosomes, gametes, anatomy, hormones, etc. In the real world, some folks are born with features that don’t all agree with one or another archetype. Intersex people aren’t common, about 1 in 2,000, but their existence proves that sex isn’t just a binary. There’s diversity to sex that requires a more complicated scheme to account for everybody.
Gender, likewise, doesn’t follow the one-or-the-other model. Most folks are cisgender, but some folks have a gender that doesn’t agree with what people assume their sex is, or no gender at all, or a gender that doesn’t fit into the man/woman spectrum. It gets complicated quickly because gender is where sex and society intersect. Some cultures have different expectations based on gender, and some even have more than two recognized genders. That’s why we say “gender is a social construct”, because we all get to define for ourselves what it means to be a man, woman, or otherwise. That’s how gender is constructed, it’s a social project we all engage in whether we realize it or not.
Biological sex != gender. There’s not even 2 classes of biological sex. There are men born with biological female organs and women born with biologically men’s organs. We all as humans do share common organs, one of which happens to be the nipple.
Regardless of what your actual biological sex is a gender is simply a social construct used to identify someone. A person who is “non-binary” feels that their gender does not conform to what you would typically expect of either male or female based on appearances or behavior.
Sure but there are two major biological sexes. I can understand how gender can be defined as something else though.
Non-binary can decide what gender they feel like.
Anyone can decide what gender they feel like. Most people identify with one of the major genders, but many people don’t for multiple possible biological reasons. Nobody is in good faith identifying as a gender they don’t actually feel like.
Sure. If you define the word gender as identifying what you feel like, then it makes sense from that perspective. If I felt like my gender is someone who feels like a cat, that would be my gender then.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you had a genuine question, but I now feel that was a mistake.
Poster below gave you all the answer you’d ever need on this question you beg… If you have any integrity, add a note to your original comment to clarify that you were mistaken in your initial assumption and why.
But, doesn’t seem likely that you will.
It’s interesting that you sound so angry. Is it because of gender issues in your life, it made you bitter?
Their argument is that “gender is just a social construct”, without acknowledging that some of the most paramount aspects of human existence are “social constructs” (i.e language) and that gender is one of them. And without addressing why sexual taboos (like public nudity) are gendered - to them its a form of irrational injustice. But expore the social ramifications -through real and hypothetical examples- and you quickly find that it is indeed rational to treat bodies different according to their gender, and that human social psychology does have strong roots in human phsyiognamy.
From the person I talked to above, they are using gender to describe how they feel about who they are. So maybe it’s just a word difference.
I’m very downvoted for being in this thread though and so are you. It’s a bit funny.
A mod deleted my comment it seems.
Anyway, guess I leave this strange thread and leave people here with their beliefs.
Not true! The female nipple is actually useful.
Biological males can also lactate, it just takes a lot more effort.
Great, just another thing to make me feel like a failure at.
It takes effort but you have to milk it for all its worth!
Define useful.
Just a rhetorical request, I’m not expecting an answer.
The only thing changed between photos is clothing and pose. Is that gender? Well maybe it is, but it’s useless for classification.
If it’s one thing I learned from the thread, it’s that the word gender can be anything at all.
It’s these bad faith arguments that caused the thread to turn against you. Gender isn’t a cat, and it certainly isn’t anything at all. You claim you wanted earnest conversation, but you undermined that with snide comments you knew would result in negative reaction.
