Buttrcup: A new censorship free version of Instagram welcomes nudity

Instagram’s refusal to alter their censorship guidelines has resulted in the birth of Buttrcup, a new censorship free photosharing platform that has no trouble when it comes to ‘Freeing The Nipple’.

That’s right. #FreeTheNipple was an online movement on Instagram where artists such as photographers, illustrators and other models protested Instagram’s censorship guidelines that exclusively took down posts with full frontal female nudity. Buttrcup on the other hand, boasts exclusively about no censorship, or as they put it, “pro-provocateur, anti censorship and judgement free.”

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Interesting.

Created in October 2017 by co-founders, Molly Murphy and Michael Edwards, Buttrcup offers free signups, much like every other social media platform out there, and allows users to save favourite images to their profile on the platform. As you can see below, apart from the ability to Like and Comment on pictures, it also states ‘Private and Discreet Billing.’

Although nothing about the monetary transaction is clear, the term Billing could indicate a subscription fee that some creators could charge for exclusive, paid only images, videos and other posts.

This is how the posts on Buttrcup's feed look like. It also displays the number of views not just to the owner of the picture, but to the users as well.

"We say ‘it is nudity, yet non porn. Also, unlike Playboy the creators are in complete control of what they create, so it is like self-publishing. For the women especially, there is an ethical element in that they are in complete in control of their own content and image which is important when it comes to sexual boundaries. Also unlike Playboy, they receive money directly from each subscriber and there is no cap on how much they can earn,” Murphy told TechCrunch back in February, 2018.

The platform offers three subscription offers, as you can see below.

Still doesn’t seem like a bad idea right?

Except, it faces the inevitable influx of pornographic content in lieu of the more artistic and tasteful creators they are hoping to attract. Also, there are already multiple platforms all over the world for creators who wish to produce pornographic content, PornHub.com being the leader.

Now, there is nothing wrong with pornography, most definitely not, although aligning themselves with the #freethenipple movement, Buttrcup does have a careful path to tread since it would merely dilute the cause.

For now, it is attracting the right kind of people with one of Instagram’s most popular models, Sarah Underwood, reportedly using Buttrcup under the account name, Hotel Ma Cherie.

Maxim reached out to co-founder Molly Murphy who said, "We created Buttrcup because we saw too many creators (models and photographers) getting kicked off Instagram and losing their entire archive of work," co-founder Molly Murphy told Maxim via email.”

Murphy also adds that that they have created a censorship free platform for creators to post images that may be considered too bold for other social media platforms. “..sort of like Instagram (18+) meets Patreon.” is how she puts it.