Instagram have announced they have decided to ban harmful images after facing criticism from a teenager’s father.
They will ban all graphic self-harm images as changes are being made in response to the death of British teenager Molly Russell. The photo-sharing social platform made the decision in response to many peoples anger over distressing material about depression and suicide.
Instagram’s boss, Adam Mosseri, had a meeting with health secretary Matt Hancock. In this meeting, Mr Mosseri admitted that the company had not done enough.
Mosseri said: “We are not where we need to be on self-harm and suicide, and we need to do more to protect the most vulnerable,”
Mosseri added: “We will get better and we are committed to finding and removing this content at scale.”
Molly’s father Ian Russell said he believed Instagram was partly to blame as they found material relating to depression and suicide when they looked at her account after her death.
Instagram announced a range of further measures including the removal of non-graphic images of self half from the most visible parts of its app/website.
Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and assistant professor of communications at Syracuse University said: “At-risk individuals will not be safe until Facebook takes it role as a global corporation and communications platform more seriously. These changes should have been made years ago.”
Before the meeting, Mr Hancock said: “Social media companies need to do more, in particular, to remove material that encourages suicide and self-harm, so I’m going to be asking other social media companies to act.
“I don’t want people to go on to social media and search for images about suicide to get directed to yet more of that sort of imagery. They need help to not post more about suicide.”
Mosseri took responsibility that the move was overdue. When he was asked in an interview with the Daily Telegraph about why Instagram had taken so long to tackle the issue, he said: “We have not been as focused as we should have been on the effects of graphic imagery of anyone looking at content.
“That is something that we are looking to correct and correct quickly. It’s unfortunate it took the last few weeks for us to realise that. It’s now our responsibility to address that issue as quickly as we can.”
Before this movement Instagram just relied on users to report graphic images of self-harm as it was advised by experts that allowing users to share their stories and connect with others going through similar situations could be helpful for their recovery.
