THE GOVERNMENT ANALOGY
Government censorship has occurred throughout the ages. Usually the more fascist the government, the more content is deleted - think Nazi book burning and the Taliban destroying thousand year old artwork.
The analogy of government censorship to corporate social media companies censoring their users is fitting. Instagram and Facebook have grown so enormous that they are no longer simple corporations. They have over 3 billion users worldwide and Facebook even has it’s own currency!). With all this growth, the average user often gets lost. Furthermore the very nature of a corporation discourages an average user’s input. After a business finds that user base, growth policies are most likely driven by stockholders and legal liability.
The closest structure of government that Facebook/Instagram fall under would be a feudalistic model. Like early feudalistic governments there are obvious separate classes of citizen here. Most users fall into the peasant class. These “average” users can only have grievances addressed if they know someone in the royal court (Instagram employees) or can get their story taken up by the press.
It does look like Instagram is trying to work on their appeal progress. The addition of more moderators is hopeful for Facebook/Instagram evolution into a more democratic state. However appeals are still not always working, context is still missing from violations, and Instagrams plans for more “community moderators” appear to be rumors and not realities.
IMAGE CREDIT: Images of Nazi book burning and Taliban/Islamic state Iconoclasm