Wholesome LGBTQ Ads Rejected Because of “prostitution”

Salty is a dating and relationships newsletter for women, transgender and non-binary people. The company wanted to put ads for the newsletter on Facebook and Instagram but were denied.

Salty said that the two social platforms rejected at least four of its ads for promoting “escort services” even though none of the advertisements featured any suggestive nudity, sex workers or undertones of sex work.

Facebook and Instagram did eventually decide to allow the ads, but Salty is crying foul and say that the rejection of the wholesome ads show the inequality faced by people of color and the LGBTQ community.

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Facebook has since invited Salty “to discuss updating the nudity advertising policies that affect billions of businesses & bodies worldwide.”

Instagram also chimed in after backlash for their denial of the LGBTQ ads.

In a statement, Instagram said, “Every week, we review thousands of ads — and at times we make mistakes. We made mistakes here, and we apologize to Salty. We have reinstated the ads and will continue to investigate this case to prevent it from happening again.”

In a series of tweets published on July 9, Salty showed several of their LGBTQ ad images that had been rejected by Facebook and Instagram. They then went on to explain the situation.

“People, this is a FOSTA/SESTA in action. There are biases and assumptions built into the algorithms that are designed to write us out of them. It is no coincidence that these images are POCs (people of color), non-binary, disabled and plus sized bodies — and are the most highly regulated. Just another infuriating example of the digital world enforcing racism, homophobia and sexism. The history of sexualizing the bodies of trans women and woc (women of color) is not new. It’s just being implemented into the algorithms.”


Facebook and Instagram are two of the world’s largest social media networks with an estimated reach of over 3.3 billion people.

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