A verified account and 2.2 million followers wasn’t enough to save Kendra Sunderland from getting booted off Instagram after the porn star made salacious comments about sexual acts with the social media site’s CEO.
The saga began several weeks ago when the 25-year-old adult actress posted a topless photo of herself on the platform and then claimed in a comment that she was allowed to violate the site’s stringent nudity rules because she was “blowing” the “CEO of Instagram.”
Despite Instagram having famously strict rules around nudity, Sunderland’s account remained in place. Matters escalated further this week, when she posted an Instagram Live video of herself topless, in which she mimicked sex acts with a dildo and made similar claims about the head of the social network.
“Hey guys! I just wanna let you know I’m not deleted yet,” she said. “I’m batshit crazy. I might be sucking off the CEO of Instagram. But whatever it is, I’m here to stay!”
The claim raised more than a few eyebrows as it appeared that Instagram’s rules didn’t apply to Sunderland. Users who tried to flag the image were informed that it did not violate the site’s policies.
However, the situation rapidly flipped on Thursday and the porn star found her account shut down. “Over a billion people use Instagram and at times that means we make mistakes. This account violated our policies and we’ve now removed it,” Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“This person has no connection to executives at our company, and claims that she received preferential treatment are baseless,” it added.
Sunderland subsequently took to Twitter to air her grievances, claiming she made the provocative posts as a protest against Instagram’s policies.
We all want the same freedom on social media and we all want the discrimination against sex workers to stop. But I hope that u find some sort of satisfaction or happiness to know that my account was disabled ?
“Every woman should be allowed to post their nipples. It’s very clear that IG (Instagram) discriminates on sex workers. Everything I posted was to question their terms and try to prove a point that it shouldn’t be against their terms,” she said.
“I understand that’s upsetting to people who wish they could post the same. I, too, would see people posting worse stuff than me and getting away with it. At first I was frustrated but then realized we’re all fighting the same fight,” she added.
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