Instagram is an important social media platform for many breweries around the world. It affords them a way of announcing new releases that for many has become a lifeline especially in the wake of COVID-19.

So it’s concerning to learn that Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram algorithm has begun removing certain posts from several UK breweries that feature pictures of beer. Not sexually provocative pictures. Not beers with questionable names. Just random beers posted to announce new brewery releases.

And these images are being taken down without any explanation from Meta, which owns Instagram as well as Facebook.

Northern Monk, an uber-popular craft brewery in the UK, posted on its Instagram account that several of its pictures had been taken down with absolutely no clarification as to why. The Leeds-based brewery stated that has taken to blurring out the images in hopes that they wouldn’t get removed.

Again this is happening despite no clear violation of Instagram’s Community Standards policy and the companies have not been able to contact the social media giant for more information.

The Independent has confirmed that a number of other UK breweries, including ‘Seven Bro7hers’ and the Verdant Brewing Company in Cornwall, had also had multiple posts removed by Instagram’s algorithm.

“We received a notification that was buried amongst other notifications,” Seven Brothers told The Independent. The brewery “appealed against the first removal”, which happened on November 1, calling Instagram’s support process “pretty pointless”.

The brewery added that it had even called Instagram’s American phone number and left a voice mail explaining their situation, but that the Menlo Park, California-headquartered photo and video sharing social networking giant, never got back to them.

Instagram, which has been in action since 2010, generally forbids the promotion of alcoholic content. But it has historically made broad allowances for businesses and reputable individuals promoting their own products.

That is until recently…

And in a forum discussion BeerAdvocate co-founder Todd Alström  wrote that this beer image censorship wasn’t just happening in the United Kingdom, and that “there are quite a few {breweries} in the US that have had images pulled too and the issue seems to be growing.”