“A lot of people expressed the need for it to happen so it was just time”

A modest group of 20 artists, activists and curators were called into a private meeting at Instagram’s New York City headquarters on Monday, to discuss the platform’s policies on nudity.

After her petition to reconsider its artwork censorship got 1,000 signs on Facebook, visual artist Joann Leah went on to have several video chats with FB’s policy team before Monday’s discussion, at which among those present were Leah, Marilyn Minter, and artist-activist Micol Hebron.

The conference wasn’t anything like a protest, but the efforts of the attendees to insist on the platform change policy guidelines were zealous, agreeing that the current photo ethics on Instagram were restrictive to artistic expression.

Although owned by the behemoth company Facebook, Instagram operates under its own nudity guidelines which allow for photos of post-mastectomy scarring, women breastfeeding, and “nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures,” but prohibit “photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks” as well as “some photos of female nipples.”

The social media network has not officially announced any policy changes but considers this meeting essential to its policy development process.