First they came for Sex Workers, then they came for PinUps: A FOSTA/SESTA Story

Categories Announcement, Featured, New Work


Photo by Coopgrafik

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

M. Niemöller

My original Instagram account was disabled on 12/1/2018. 

I had over 6k followers thanks to some clever internet marketing and reposts from some notable accounts on Ig. Then my back up account with 800 plus followers was deleted exactly one week later on 12/7/2018. When I try to log in to my accounts I am given this window:

Learn More About Your Account

Your account has been disabled for not following our Community Guidelines. You won’t be able to log into this account and no one else will be able to see it. Sexually suggestive content isn’t allowed on Instagram. This includes:

Posting sexually suggestive photos or other content

Soliciting sexual services

Using sexually explicit language

If you think this was a mistake, please let us know.

I am here to let everyone know this was a big mistake

I am a pin-up model and I am currently seen as a sex worker thanks to FOSTA and SESTA.

Photo by Coopgrafik featuring @ShootTati

Being deleted once is tough. But twice in one week is a deeper level of loss with years of family photos and personal experiences just hanging in limbo. Disabled is not deleted but it is not accessible to you. Oh, what a fitting title to call it “disabled” because I am literally unable to access my profile due to a broken system. All my photos and videos I have ever posted via Instagram is only accessible via Instagram because I can not export them. I have changed my phones over the years but my ig account has stayed the same. IG was like a cloud to me, holding years of family photos, tagged work, college videos, and posts. Just gone indefinitely.

My back up account was deleted for trying to incentivize my followers to report my original account in an attempt to reinstate it. Something I have seen numerous other models do for each other. You will see on some peoples ig stories,

“Oh so and so was deleted, please go report her account to get her back on ig.”

-every ig model or photographer ever

I just didn’t know to ask to do that was against the rules after seeing so many other accounts do it but I do now. Specifically, rule number #5:


5. Incentivization Pages, Groups, and Events must not incentivize people to misuse Facebook features or functionality.

Airbnb, lyft, Reddit all have human beings who can respond to you in some regard. Ig or Facebook does not. They will lock you out of your own information and data and not even respond to you. Since 12/1/2018 I have sent 10 messages to Ig and never got a response. Not even an email about my account being disabled. It just is.

In reality I think my account was disabled for directing people to my site. That violates rule number #12:


12. Driving Traffic to Third Party Apps and Sites You must not accept anything of value to drive traffic to an app or site that engages in traffic arbitrage, or one that contains a disproportionate volume of ads relative to content, or content that is highly sexual, shocking, clickbait, or promotes scams.

On my site, I offer a subscription to a photoblog and private Snapchat. I do not perform sexual acts or favors. I am not meeting my patrons in real life. I am not selling video pornography of any kind on my site. However, if you think I am being subjective how do you explain these accounts.

Exhibit 1 

Exhibit 2

Before I started my ” Instagram Modeling” journey, I had about 1200 followers in early 2017. By early 2018 I had 2000. I steady grew that following organically over the course of a year to almost 7 thousand (6.7k) followers. I did not pay for any of these new followers which is a very common practice to see today. When you see someone with thousands of followers, minus the equal or relative likes on their posts or views on their videos, they might be paying for bot followers. This is done to appear relevant to the naive Instagram user. But a real one recognizes a real one. That’s not my style to pay for bots and likes or views to appear more relevant.

 Rather, I just put out a bunch of consistent high-quality photos and video art daily for about 360 days straight. I played the hashtag game even though I was shadowbanned. That means I did not even show up under my own hashtags when I searched myself as #brissabreezy on ig when my account was still active. I guess my name alone was “blacklisted”. 

Regardless, I learned about and cranked some quality content out on Reddit last year (the third most visited site in the world) and plugged my ig wherever I could. It helped. A lot. Sometimes I would get lucky when another instagram account with a big organic following would like my photos and ask to repost them. That could be super helpful because you could gain 100 new follows easily in a day, versus in a week. Real actual people who didn’t know you existed. You,  a real actual person, making their own quality content, being reposted on a credible feed. That is almost like hitting the top of a subreddit. It’s huge for exposure and views.

I started using instagram in 2012 primarily as a way to stay informed on current events and keep in touch with friends and family that were not into the politricks of facebook. After the frequent data breaches on facebook I needed another way to keep in touch off of FB. Later I found out IG and FB were one and the same social monitoring company that likes to read your private messages and sell your data to the highest bidder but that is for another blog. Here you can read the new rules that apply to all Instagram users as a company owned by Facebook. But back to how I got banned from instagram and then some subreddits shortly after.

Photo by Coopgrafik


After Hurricane Maria, I started a patreon page and began ig modeling in September of 2017. I immediately started accumulating relief items after witnessing the embarrassing Fema response on the ground. I remember the response in Katrina and just knew the American people in PR were going to get even less emergency relief if any. We were right. 

So I asked my ig friends to join my patreon and help raise funds to help ship these items out.  About $500 worth of stuff I had acquired plus $180 just to ship it. Thankfully the response was immediate. With only 1800 followers at the time I got 19 patrons in 3 days of creating my patreon. I was ecstatic. I knew then and there that I actually had friends that wanted to help out and see more of me in the process.  Then Mexico city got with a 7.1 magnitude earthquake literally three days later. I knew I needed to help them too and thus “Charatitties” was born. I started donating 50% of everything I raised for different charatites each month from my patreon earnings.

While I can imagine that sounds like easy money, it is not. It costs me $95.00 just to pay my cell phone bill every month an I have never been able to make more than $100 a month on Patreon. Then I donate half of that. That does not cover my hair, makeup, wardrobe and sometimes locations and photographers fees that I pay for in exchange for creating incredible photo art that I  share on my website and tease on my instagram.

The only reason I sell my art at all is to donate half the money I raise for charity. I don’t create pornography in fact I don’t even spread eagle or open my book as I like to say. I keep my book closed so you can’t read my pages, if you catch my drift. I am not doing webcam solo shows or any sexual acts really other than strip tease burlesque dancing on my snap chat. Which I recently learned is considered sex work

I carry a presence and sometimes a few people will subscribe to see that. Right now I have less than 10 wonderful patrons internationally from Germany, Italy, Canada and across the US so far averaging about $55 a month in donations each month since 2017. Quite the drop since having all 6 thousand followers on my original IG thats for sure but hey that’s why I am blogging and even posting on reddit at all in the first place. Am I right?

My point about losing my instagram account(s) aside from my family photos is that every little bit of exposure helps. When you steal a girls photo and don’t credit her, you are literally deducting money from her efforts and hard work to give you quality art on a consistent basis.

Photo by Coopgrafik

I have a platform to educate people about what matters to me and it helps to reach an even wider audience so I can donate even more. I feel very lucky to say I have never thought of this as a way of life or means of supporting myself. It is literally a fun hobby I do on the side. Like any fun hobby, one will usually lose money doing it but oh well. It is still fun.

Instagram was a great platform for marketing. Was being the operative word. Just writing this blog was a painful reminder that I may never get it back.

What is happening to instagram?

Why are Models and photographers being targeted?

What would ig be without models and photographers for a day?

“I’ll consume my consumers, with no sense of humour
I’ll give you a uniform, chloroform
Sanitize, homogenize, vaporize’ you I’m the spark, make the world explode
I’m a man-eating machine, I’ll make the world explode
Corporate cannibal?” 

– Grace Jones

In case you are curious here are the new rules for all instagram and facebook users :


https://m.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/?refsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fpage_guidelines.php&_rdr

Good luck out there, it is a wild world.
— 
Brissa M. Page

@freshbybreezy on ig & @brissabreezy on twitter.

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