OnlyFans models are using breastfeeding content as a loophole to bypass Instagram’s nudity policy

By Charlie Sawyer

Updated Sep 3, 2024 at 10:50 AM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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Meta is currently in the midst of a new Nipplegate, with breastfeeding Reels popping left, right and centre on Instagram users’ recommended feeds. But a closer look into what, at first, seems like an inspiring movement aiming to raise awareness about the benefits of lactation and educate mothers and mothers-to-be has proved to be a loophole for adult content creators to bypass Meta’s strict policy on nudity and explicit content.

So, what’s with all the boobs on Instagram? Over the past few days, a multitude of videos that feature women exposing their breasts and simulating breastfeeding with what appears to be Reborn Dolls have been flooding the social media platform. For those of you who have never heard of Reborns, they’re incredibly lifelike baby dolls that consumers often use to cope with grief or loss of a lost child.

While a couple of observant netizens have pondered over whether this surge in breastfeeding content has to do with Meta finally relaxing its policies regarding users showing their nipples on Instagram, others are convinced that it is more likely that adult creators have come up with an ingenious way to fool the platform’s algorithm in order to advertise their paid nude content on OnlyFans. This theory is also founded on the fact that a number of the clips are highly sexualised and contain absolutely zero educational information or advice.

Instead, many posts are accompanied by captions such as “Do you want some? 😊” and “Mommy breastfeeding 🥵🌹.”

Meta has been heavily criticised in the past for its policies regarding adult nudity. In January 2023, after it removed two Instagram posts depicting transgender and non-binary people with bare chests, Meta’s Oversight Board not only overturned the decision but also demanded that sweeping changes be made, highlighting that the company’s adult nudity policy is based on a binary view of gender, making it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people.

Included in the board’s decision was this statement: “In at least one of the cases, the post was sent for human review by an automated system trained to enforce the Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity Community Standard. This standard prohibits images containing female nipples other than in specified circumstances, such as breastfeeding and gender confirmation surgery.”

This then brings the question of whether so many of these new nude videos are slipping through the cracks because Meta is scanning them and subsequently approving them as “breastfeeding” content.

While most of the videos being circulated are simply set to popular music and feature the women smiling in the camera—a format that doesn’t help properly identify who the creators are—while researching this latest trend, SCREENSHOT noticed that some of the accounts pushing out this lactation content include direct links to their private OnlyFans accounts.

Since the alleged breastfeeding accounts have begun taking over Instagram Reels, a handful of users have taken to X (formerly Twitter) as well as Reddit to complain about this surge in nude content. On Reddit, one user who claimed they are also a verified OnlyFans creator wrote: “I am beside myself with certain creators using the guise of ‘Educational Breastfeeding Content’ to play with their boobs on Instagram while holding a very realistic looking baby on camera. Am I the only one bothered by this? Is this common? Is this where our industry is headed? Everyone is praising them for ‘finding a loophole’ but it feels like a loophole for CSAM (child sexual abuse material) and I’m just wondering did I miss a shift in our industry?”

On that same Reddit thread, adult content creators joined the discussion to express that these types of videos, where Reborns are shown on-camera, misuse and misrepresent legitimate lactation content—a highly popular type of fetish porn available on OnlyFans.

Meanwhile on X, one netizen went as far as to call the content creators taking of this moderation defect “OnlyFans whores.”

While Meta is likely receiving multiple complaints about this alleged loophole as you’re reading this, the tech company has not yet issued any statements or made any obvious steps towards suppressing or erasing these users.