Shadow banned
Big & Tall Records incite a shadow ban from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google. Due to this heinously rad gif we posted right after Queen (lizzy) Elizabeth’s death. On Oct 7th 2022 during the queens funeral procession we posted the time magazine cover featuring the queen in a bright lime green suit and a hat to match. We thought it’d be great fun to turn her in to a lizard using some custom ai tools that had just been open-sourced. We turned her in to a lizard and tagged her the “lizard queen.” We hoped it’d be a bit of satire that could generate some clicks and Unfortunately it did.
In a matter of 3 minutes the video went viral stacking up 96k plays. As quickly as it went viral we got notification from Instagram that our post had violated their terms of service and we received a permanent strike against our account @Bigandtallrecords. We were banned from taking out ads. Not only did they abruptly cut off the views to the video but suddenly our audience fell off. We had seen regular growth up to about 1000 followers which now has dwindled down to just below 400 due to this shadow ban.
our little stunt had far reaching consequences. It not only effected our visibility on instagram but also regionally restricted our account. We often would check on other’s phones to see if they were able to search @bigandtallrecords on instagram; some would show the account but most would not. we also noticed that somehow this had effected our youtube streams, as well as our seo. Our position on google had also suddenly fallen off drastically. our regular clicks of about 500 per month suddenly shifted to around 50 per month.
The numbers that were growing steadily every day suddenly vanished. The growth stopped on all channels and all organic play counts on all platforms began to lessen. In other words they turned us off. We appealed these decisions hundreds of times only to be blocked by Instagram's tech support. A symptom of being shadow banned is to try and create an ad; Any creation of the ad will be stopped and throw errors. Since our ban 3 years ago we have seen our numbers slowly and continually die due to our ill timed artwork.
Art should be protected under freedom of speech. These current platforms like Instagram, X (Twitter), Youtube, Spotify and their algorithms Vastly favor narrative over artwork. Their algorithms designed to suggest material that gets the most clicks (money), by driving the clicks towards current narratives; it has dulled the artist’s voice to background noise; unless that voice is a willing mouth piece for the current narrative.
At Big & Tall Records we hate this. We don't believe artists should be forced to create work for some narrative or some self-serving political agenda masquerading as artwork. Is this what artists have been reduced to? either shout along with the mob or be silenced. Digital systems have made censorship as simple as turning a 1 to 0.
even more concerning now with the congressional oversight hearings showing emails detailing the extent of tools facebook, instagram, google, created not just for the FBI and NSA but even the CCP. What are Zuckerberg/Meta/insta accused of? In short, Meta (formerly Facebook) and other tech companies are accused of working with federal agencies like the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DHS to:
Suppress or remove content that went against government narratives.
Silence certain political views under the label of misinformation or disinformation.
Build internal tools and portals (like content moderation dashboards) that allowed government officials to flag posts for removal.
This is often described by critics as “Censorship Industrial Complex", where the government allegedly pressured or guided private platforms to limit free speech. We Believe we may have accidentally triggered their system with our Lizard Queen post landing Big & Tall Records in the same category as domestic terrorists simply for posting satire.
lest we forget what tools Snowden already told us about:
PRISM
What it does: Direct access to data from major tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc.)—emails, video chats, photos, documents, etc.
Relation to censorship: Provides the technical foundation for identifying “targets” based on content; supporting the suppression of certain narratives flagged by authorities.
2. XKEYSCORE
What it does: A global digital dragnet—collects nearly everything a user does on the internet (searches, emails, chats, metadata).
Relation to censorship: Enables identification of dissenting voices or trending narratives in real time. Currently used to build watchlists or initiate takedown requests.
3. TEMPORA (run by UK’s GCHQ, shared with NSA)
What it does: Taps into fiber-optic cables to collect all internet traffic—phone calls, emails, social media.
Relation to censorship: Enables population-level analysis of opinion shifts, ideal for targeting “misinformation” campaigns preemptively.
