Images glamorising anorexia and self-harm still rife on Instagram

INSTAGRAM has blamed European privacy laws for its failure to suppress selfharm content after an investigation by The Daily Telegraph found that images are still rampant two years after the company vowed to stamp them out.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, pledged in February 2019 to “do everything we can” to stop such content from spreading in the wake of the suicide of teenager Molly Russell. Instead, the Facebook-owned app has been locked in a privacy stand-off with the Irish Data Protection Commission ( DPC) since March 2019 that has left key parts of its promised crackdown in limbo.

As a result, Instagram’s recommendation algorithms push users towards accounts and content which break its rules against promoting and glamorising self-injury or eating disorders.

Pictures of wounds, instructions for starvation and artful photos of protruding bones were among images recommended to the Telegraph after following only a handful of related accounts.

After being contacted by the Telegraph, Instagram removed more than 100 accounts and blocked five hashtags from search results. A spokesman said it would soon begin blocking searches for certain self-harm terms.

Tara Hopkins, Instagram’s head of policy for Europe and the Middle East, claimed the company’s ability to deploy new technology in the UK and the EU had been crippled by GDPR, which remains in force in Britain. She said:

“There are questions about whether this more sophisticated technology is allowed under GDPR, because it’s considered to be potentially making a judgment on someone’s mental health.”

Facebook is discussing a compromise proposal with the DPC, which is the social media giant’s chief data regulator in Europe. The legal wrangling does not affect eating disorder images, which remain endemic. A spokesman said Instagram had prioritised self-injury first because it was more common and carried a greater risk of imminent harm.

Andy Burrows, head of online child safety at the NSPCC, said: “By not enforcing their own rules and having algorithms that target users with this damaging material, Instagram continues to put children at risk.”