On March 28th I woke up to notifications via my Instagram account @stuartsandford that it had been disabled (along with Facebook and Threads) for violating community standards on ‘fraud and deception’. There was no warning and no chance to appeal or ask for a review against this bizarre decision.

I’ve been trying for almost three weeks to retrieve the account via various methods but so far none have been successful. I can only assume that Meta took this action in an attempt to silence queer art and a queer artist. Many friends and colleagues have been also targeted recently for their supposed breach of Meta’s opaque and arbitrary ‘Community Standards’ but an accusation of fraud and deception will absolutely not be met with silence on my part.

I’m going to continue to attempt to regain access to my accounts and those connections and patrons I’ve built up over almost 20 years of using Facebook and 15 with Instagram. As much as I believe Meta to be a shitty company with no regard for art or creativity except for one it sutis them (i.e. their shareholders), there are many important connections I would like to retain, including family and friends from around the world, that I might not otherwise be connected with.

I’ve reached out the Guardian as well as The Art Newspaper to cover the story and I think this is the way forward. Any censorship of queer art and artists is not acceptable. Many of us are living in darker, more unstable times than we’ve known and art is needed now more than ever. With that in mind I would ask that you share this far and wide on your socials and help me make an issue out of it for all of us.

You can report and track cases like this via www.reprouncensored.org and here is a global map of digital censorship www.reprouncensored.org/map