A couple things here. A while back we did several posts about the social progress index (with the original, unglitched Dutch masterpiece version of this 1600s schoolhouse painting to symbolize world literacy). We talked about how big data (or at least econometric) models predict how closed societies negatively impact our world, and some speculation about real world events. Since we wrote our original article, one of the Social Progress Index folks did a Ted talk. On an unrelated noted, we also we wanted to do an encore repost of our Dutch schoolhouse painting. This was partially to remind our Instagram followers about the demonstrated importance of open societies: a combination (and balance) of factors such as high literacy (education), low corruption, security, and low inequality.
Ironically, Instagram decided to censor our original post comment (with this image but with a caption about glitch art and the Social Progress Index.) The image was allowed but the comment automatically deleted by Instagram’s censorship software. (Of course, they cannot openly explain how this software works, as otherwise it would be too easy for the genuine bad actors, which are the targets of this software, to evade it’s function.) We think it was our use of the “#man” hashtag, in combination with certain other hashtags. The use of the tag was appropriate (there is indeed a man in this photo), but the combination of hash tags we used (all accurately describing the photo) was probably (we think) highly associated with images that were negatively regarded by viewers. So we don’t think there was anything overtly political in Instagram censoring an image comment that essentially advocated freedom of speech or less unequal societies. But it was ironic nevertheless that censorship software decided to flag that particular comment. (The original comment also talks about how we glitched the Dutch schoolhouse masterpiece from our original blog post into this. Glitching is a digital art technique that creates Warhol-like effects.)
Instagram’s software kept censoring our attempts to newly post revised captions (or comment explanations of why we had posted an image without a caption). Since we weren’t sure what keywords or phrases were triggering the problem, we gave up. Instead we posted the following short comment, which passed the software: “Instagram has decided to #censor our (rather benign) explanation for this post without explanation. You’ll have to visit Tumblr to read it, we guess.”
Enough said, here is Michael Green’s Ted talk on the Social Progress Index: