San Francisco’s oldest gay bar, the Stud, saw its Instagram account temporarily suspended this week after at least one user reported its posts for “human trafficking,” the nightclub’s owners said.
Social media is the Stud’s primary form of marketing for its parties, concerts and drag events to its 30,000 followers, Honey Mahogany – a local activist and co-owner of the South of Market bar – said in a video posted to social media Friday afternoon.
“But recently, we’ve been targeted by someone who is flagging our trans parties as engaging in human trafficking,” Mahogany said. “And this weekend, the day before Dore Alley, a major gay weekend that we rely on to keep us afloat through the leaner months ahead, the Stud’s account was suspended.”
For much of the weekend, Instagram displayed an error message to users attempting to view the Stud’s profile on the platform, which is owned by Meta. The account was restored by 7 p.m. Saturday, co-owner Nate Albee confirmed.
Albee said the account was suspended over a year-old post about a trans party celebrating Dore Alley, a fetish and kink festival also known as Up Your Alley. Held annually on Dore Street between Folsom and 10th streets, Sunday’s event serves as a precursor to the Folsom Street Fair in September.
“Meta is from San Francisco – they know the Folsom Street Fair happens,” Albee said. “If Meta wants to protect kids from seeing sexualized images, great. … We’re supportive. But it’s time to come up with a system that is not on the backs of minority groups who people want to persecute.”
Albee said LGBT institutions – especially those that post “anything to do with drag” – were a frequent target of online harassment from people who report their posts “for fun” until social media platforms take disciplinary action.
San Francisco’s Stud bar, shown last year, relies on social media sites such as Instagram to promote its events to patrons. (Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle)
The Instagram account for San Francisco’s Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District was also temporarily suspended this week before being restored Saturday evening, said Bob Goldfarb, the district’s executive director.
Goldfarb said the offending post featured an event at the Stud, where two people were pictured shirtless wearing puppy masks associated with fetish culture. The photo was flagged twice, then taken down, over concerns that it “may show sexual activity,” Goldfarb said.
“Anyone who was familiar with sexual activity would not think that was possible,” Goldfarb said. “It is completely annoying. They don’t really give you any information about what part of the post was violating their community standards, so we have no way to change things going forward.”
Two years ago, San Francisco Trans March organizer Niko Storment told several news outlets that the event’s Instagram was temporarily suspended the day after the 2024 event.
Instagram allows its users to report human trafficking or other forms of exploitation as a violation of its community guidelines. Suspended accounts aren’t accessible to users and can’t be viewed by others. The social media platform allows users to “appeal the suspension if you believe we made a mistake.”
The Stud’s appeal of its suspension was initially rejected, Albee said. A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday evening.
Albee said the threat of suspension can pose a meaningful risk to historic businesses such as the Stud, which has operated on a razor-thin financial margin since the pandemic.
“We’re world famous for drag,” Albee said. “We’re trying to stay open. So it’s a big deal for us to be just at the whims of an algorithm.”
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This article originally published at Historic S.F. gay bar temporarily suspended from Instagram over ‘human trafficking’ claim.