A charity that offers free tattoos to mastectomy patients has had its social media accounts restricted after its content was flagged as “inappropriate”, despite abiding by community guidelines.

The Nipple Innovation Project, which was founded by the Bradford-based tattoo artist Lucy Thompson in 2018, is the UK’s first mastectomy tattoo charity that offers breast cancer survivors free tattoos that resemble real nipples on reconstructed skin.

It recently secured its first NHS partnership with Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to provide its nipple tattoo services to eligible patients at St Luke’s Hospital in Bradford, West Yorkshire. 

The charity said it had faced repeated bans and content removals on TikTok and Instagram since it began posting images of its work, despite their community guidelines expressly allowing posts featuring post-mastectomy scarring.

The charity and Thompson’s own Instagram accounts have been restricted after four posts were deemed to violate the platform’s guidelines, with Instagram saying the posts “helped to arrange or encourage sexual activities”.

The restrictions mean the charity’s content will not be shown to any non-followers and prevents the accounts from doing livestreams. 

Thompson said she suspected her Instagram account was also shadow-banned – which is when a social media platform bans a user’s content from showing up on followers’ feeds without informing the user – because her posts do not reach about one-fifth of her followers.

“I am genuinely scared we’re going to lose one or both accounts,” she said. “We’re simply trying to fulfil our charitable purpose and now our account is restricted.”

Thompson’s TikTok account has faced repeated bans and content removals, with Thompson’s account having been deleted multiple times due to “nudity” and “sexually suggestive content”. 

She said: “We follow TikTok’s community guidelines, which supposedly allow post-mastectomy scarring for raising awareness of breast cancer, yet our posts are consistently removed.”

Thompson said the images she posts were “not in the slightest bit sexualised or offensive” and she puts lots of warnings to prepare people, but the posts still get flagged.

“TikTok is such a big platform that could really help us raise awareness and help more people, but it feels like we are constantly being punished and I am so tired of it. I don’t have any fight left in me after this second banning,” she said.

Thompson argued that the bans unjustly sexualise the tattoos, saying: “We are shaming people who are bravely giving consent to these images being shared to help raise awareness and give hope to others.”

Although she said she had attempted to contact both platforms, Thompson said that she just received “generic responses” and links to community guidelines, which explicitly say that posts featuring post-mastectomy scarring is permissible.

The charity is urging social media platforms to revise their contempt guidelines to prevent the removal of medical art and is encouraging the public to share stories and images of mastectomy tattoos to help normalise and destigmatise them.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, said: "Images showing post-mastectomy scarring and areola tattoos are absolutely allowed on Facebook and Instagram. We applaud the incredible work medical tattooists do for breast cancer survivors, and know our apps play an important role in helping these communities connect.

"By design, these tattoos often look extremely realistic, which means our technology – and even our content reviewers – don’t always spot the difference, so we do encourage people to make it clear when they’re posting an image that’s a tattoo. We understand how frustrating this can be.” 

Third Sector understands that Meta is investigating the issue.

TikTok has been contacted for comment.