Dear Team Meta,

We are writing to ask you for clarifications regarding a problem we encountered with the visibility of our publications dealing with knives on your platforms. We are professionals, artisans, enthousiasts, users. We are knifemakers and manufacture with passion these tools of everyday life or those objets at the border between craft and art. We are cooks who feed our loved ones and our guests every day. We are users of these tools, artisans of all types, hikers, hunters, collectors, artists, etc. Everyone on this earth uses this tool at least for feeding themselves and it is one of the oldest tools used by man. We use your platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Threads to share high-quality images and contents about these tools, their uses and the creations they allow us to make.

We have all noticed that our posts representing knives have limited visibility on your platforms: our posts are sometimes deleted and our accounts are not recommanded because our posts are said to not respect the rules of your platforms. After numerous and ongoing appeals, account restrictions are not lifted. We’ve reviewed Instagram’s community guidelines to ensure they’re compliant, and we haven’t found any evidence that our content, when shared responsibly, violates your policies. These posts are educationals and artistics, aimed at promoting such tools or art objects, and do not involve any representation of violence or inappropriate use. Even if our publications do not talk about selling, buying or trading knives, these publications are still flagged and our accounts limited.

The following is what we can find in your community standards

« For the following content, we restrict visibility to adults 18 years of age and older:

Bladed Items:

Content that attempts to buy, sell, trade, coordinate, donate, gift or asks for: bladed items and any other weapons (e.g., pepper spray or knuckle rings).

Communnity Standards, 2024

Certain goods, services, or brands may not be promoted with branded content. We prohibit promotion of the following:

Weapons, ammunition or explosives.
Branded content must not promote firearms (including firearms parts, ammunition, paintball guns and bb guns), firearm silencers or suppressors, weapons (including pepper spray, non-culinary knives/blades/spears, tasers, nunchucks, batons, or weapons intended for self-defense), or fireworks or explosives.

Branded Content Policies, 2024

Even if we set our accounts to not be visible to people under 18 years old, our accounts are restricted and our posts are marked as not respecting your platforms' rules. 

We have not found in your community standards prohibition to publish content on knives in an educational or artistic context, that is not promoting violence or misuse of these tools. We have not found prohibition to attempt to buy, sell, trade, coordinate, donate, gift or asks of these objects to persons aged at least 18 years old in publications that are not branded contents.

While we understand the importance of content surveillance and the prohibition of publications depicting knives in a context of violence, these objects should not be stigmatized and reported as problematic systematically. Content representing these objects in an artistic or educational setting must be able to express itself freely on your platforms.

Our request is as follows:

Clarification: Could you confirm if there are any restrictions under the Instagram guidelines or algorithms for posts featuring knives in an educational or artistic way?

Review: For all posts that have been flagged or limited, we respectfully request a review to ensure there is no error.

Guidance : If there are specific requirements to make our publications compliant with your policies, we would appreciate detailed guidance.

As dedicated users of your platforms, we value Instagram, Facebook and Threads as a spaces for creativity and education. We hope this issue can be resolved quickly to allow our content and publications to reach the intended audience.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your response, 

Sincerely,