A Toronto-based photographer is raising questions about the removal of months-old photo showing a helicopter that had just dropped off Drake taking off from the city’s downtown.
In April, amateur photographer Michael Massie and several others were snapping shots of the Toronto skyline from Polson Pier when a helicopter touched down nearby, which turned out to be carrying Drake.
One of Massie’s fellow photographers, who he hadn’t met before, moved closer to the helicopter to take photos. Massie said that move prompted aggression from Drake and his entourage.
READ MORE: ‘It felt surreal:’ Amateur photographers say Drake confronted them on Toronto pier
Massie posted a photo of the helicopter taking off in front of the Toronto skyline after the encounter. Drake is not visible in the photo.
Massie details what he says happened between Drake and the other photographer in the photo’s caption. Nothing came of it for months, until last week when he noticed the photo had been taken down by Instagram leaving a blank space over the caption.
Massie said he believes Instagram censored his photo at Drake’s request.
Click here to view“I read through the Instagram guidelines dozens of times. There is nothing wrong with this photo. There is nothing against the guidelines,” Massie said in an interview with Global News.
“My bigger beef with this is that Instagram would let something like that happen. People use this to share their things and I would like to consider myself a part of the Instagram community, and to actually let someone be censored just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t like what they’ve done is troublesome.”
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, restored the photo to Massie’s original post on Friday afternoon. The move follows multiple requests for an explanation from Massie and a request for comment from Global News.
READ MORE: Facebook reinstates iconic ‘napalm girl’ photo after being accused of censorship
Social media sites often have terms of use agreements that give themselves worldwide royalty-free rights to those images – and there’s not much users can do about it, according to intellectual property lawyer Jason Leung.
“If it’s a another user that has a problem with what you’ve posted, they can contact Facebook and Facebook or Instagram could take the position that, ‘We agree – this should not be the type of content that we want on our social media site.'”
Update: Instagram provided Global News comment on this story after its publication. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson said, “The image was down for a short period of time due to a bug. It has now been restored and we apologize for any inconvenience.”