Boosie Badazz is many things, and it’s fair to call the beloved Baton Rouge rapper a lightning rod for controversy. Known for saying and doing whatever he so desires, Boosie has been a frequent recipient of the Instagram ban hammer, having recently lost his account once more.
As it happens, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri recently took a moment to sit down with The Breakfast Club, where he proceeded to explain why Boosie’s days on the popular platform have become so numbered. “You’ve gotta draw the line somewhere,” he says, after Charlamagne specifically asks about Boosie’s page. “It’s a nudity policy. We try to be clear. You can appeal but if you have too many strikes, something will happen.”
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Envy feels there’s a bit of a double standard, admitting that he has flagged Kim Kardashian dozens of times. “Remember when Kim posted the picture of her nipple one time?” he asks, prompting a flabbergasted reaction from his co-hosts. “Why would you do that?” asks Charlemagne.
Clearly passionate about the issue, Envy lets fly his defense. “Because!” he states. “They taking everybody else down! So I flagged it.” Mosseri makes it clear that no female nipple — not even that of a Kardashian — is safe from the ban hammer.
“Does Instagram understand culture though?” argues Charlamagne. “Lil Duval, Lil Boosie whose page always gets taken down. It could be for doing things like using the n-word. But they’re using it in the context of that’s my n-word. But it will get taken down for racial stuff.”
“It’s tough,” admits Mosseri. “We don’t understand culture perfectly at all. You can’t at our scale. So there are things we have to draw the line or define a rule that is practical for us to actually enforce. The perfect rule would be nuance but the perfect rule we cannot enforce accurately and consistently. There are certain racial slurs you cannot say on Instagram, regardless of how you identify.”
Check out Mosseri’s full interview with The Breakfast Club below, with Boosie talk kicking off around the twenty-eight-minute mark.
WATCH: Head of IG Adam Mosseri on The Breakfast Club