Instagram, borrowing a page from Tumblr, has announced that the service is stepping up its efforts to grow a "positive and healthy community" by banishing any and all content that promotes self-harm. Or, in plain-speak, Instagram's looking to kick out anything that promotes eating disorders, cutting, suicide, or similar actions – "promotes" being the key word in that sentence.
"While Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographs, any account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning," reads the new addition to Instagram's community guidelines.
"We believe that communication regarding these behaviors in order to create awareness, come together for support and to facilitate recovery is important, but that Instagram is not the place for active promotion or glorification of self-harm."
Instagram is asking its users to help community-police its content by flagging photographs or users for "Terms of Service violations" if they're found to be supporting self-harm in images, hashtags, or through the name or subject of their accounts.
But that's not all. Instagram is also making it trickier for its users to actively share this kind of content by banning related hashtags within its search function, like "thinspiration," "probulimia," and "proanorexia."
Additionally, content that's related to self-harm, but not necessarily supporting or promoting it, will now come with a disclaimer that users must click or tap through prior to viewing the image. A warning will inform Instagram users that the content they're looking for, "may contain graphic content," and one of two different promoted URLs will appear beneath the text.
For images related to suicide or self-harm, Instagram will direct users to befrienders.org for more information or support. Content related to eating disorders will receive a disclaimer that links to nationaleatingdisorders.org.
"These notices will provide those searching for, or navigating to, these hashtag pages resources in order to seek help, as well as the ability to choose to either view or navigate away from the associated content," reads Instagram's blog post.
As mentioned, Instagram's new policy is similar to a policy Tumblr enacted in February of this year. The site was actually exploring two different options for dealing with this kind of material: Adding a disclaimer and warning to any and all content that promotes self-harm or banning it entirely. The latter option won out, making the promotion and glorification of eating disorders, self-mutilation, or suicide persona non grata on the site.
"These are messages and points of view that we strongly oppose, and don't want to be hosting," said Tumblr representatives in a blog post.
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