Instagram will restrict some diet posts, once users complain
The days of detox teas and lip filler posts overrunning your Instagram may be numbered.
Facebook announced Wednesday (via The Guardian) that it is changing its policy around posts that peddle diet products and monetarily promote cosmetic surgery.
It will age-gate content that sells these products, making them invisible to anyone under 18. It will also outright ban posts that make "miraculous claims" about diet products with links or codes to buy.
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But as with any new content policy, the devil is in the details. Facebook is drawing the (albeit fuzzy) line for the policy around posts that are clearly meant to generate sales of the product. How egregiously promotional a post has to be to fall under the policy is not yet clear, meaning the products and services could still have a strong presence on the platforms, if they're careful about wording.
What's more, Facebook and Instagram won't be directly going after these posts. Instead, they will only age-gate or remove the posts after users report them — likely once plenty of susceptible users or minors have seen them.
"We will remove or restrict content if it breaks our Community Guidelines, once reported to us by the community," a Facebook spokesperson clarified for Mashable.
It's easy to see why Facebook is taking action on diet products and surgical procedures. There has been ongoing criticism of the presence of pernicious posts that offer gut squishing, face tweaking, and miracle diuretics that promise to make you look like a Kardashian (sometimes pushed by Kardashians themselves).
Beyond contributing to unhealthy body image expectations, some of the diet products can be supremely unhealthy, encouraging eating disorders or severely dehydrating users.
Additionally, social media has been linked to an increase in plastic surgery requests among young people. People want to look more like their filtered selves, and they turn to social media to find the people and procedures to make that happen; experts have said that social media is a huge advertising and marketing opportunity for plastic surgeons.
So now, in partnership with Dr. Ysabel Gerrard, who specializes in body image and mental health, and advocate-actor Jameela Jamil, a vocal critic of the diet industry's use of influencer marketing, Facebook is making a change across both Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram will roll out a setting to report these sorts of posts within the app in coming weeks. Here is the specific wording of the policy that Facebook sent to Mashable:
Restrict: If a post promotes the use of certain weight loss products or cosmetic procedures, and has an incentive to buy or includes a price, we will restrict people we know to be under 18 from seeing that post
Remove: When the content makes a miraculous claim about certain diet or weight loss products, and is linked to a commercial offer such as a discount code, it will no longer be allowed under our Community Guidelines and we will remove it from Instagram
Though the new policy applies to both platforms, these posts have flourished on Instagram in particular, where Instagram models frequently promote body ideals that are unattainable without surgery, and often, photoshop — but nonetheless hawk detox teas to pay the bills. Facebook specifically said that it is looking at "products on Instagram such as diet teas, supplements and certain cosmetic surgery." It's likely that the new policy will affect the influencers who use their bodies as proof of these products' validity the most.
That's especially true since Facebook noted that it has always prohibited direct advertising of diet products and cosmetic surgery; the new policy is intended to "address the growing trend of influencer marketing and organic content."
Additionally, doctors and the influencers they enlist to support them may be affected.
It's still somewhat unclear what content Facebook will and will not allow or age gate at this time, and it seems that the discretion of human reviewers will play a huge part. We do know that it is focusing explicitly on diet products and procedures, and not products that fall into a gray area, like waist trainers. That's something Facebook could consider in the future, since waist trainers aren't exactly a diet or surgery product, but they function like modern corsets, make "miraculous claims," and certainly promote an unhealthy body image.
Another clear differentiator for the policy is whether a post is simply promoting the product, or whether it is actively pushing a link to buy, or an offer code. If a post falls into the latter camp, it could be restricted or removed. Even posts that simply provide a price for the product could be subject to the policy.
Facebook has been taking steps to remove harmful physical and mental health information from its platforms. Earlier this month, it made changes to how it handles posts about suicide and self-harm, which includes restrictions on potentially triggering images. It has recently gone more aggressively after bogus cancer treatments and anti-vaccination content. It is also attempting to use AI to more proactively screen for prohibited content before it goes up, but that's still not standard across the board.
Facebook is trying to catch up to all the ways toxic messaging can spread on its platforms, and it's clear that specific policies for different types of posts is what's needed. While the new policy doesn't encompass the totality of harmful body image posts on a platform filled with unattainable standards, and still relies on users to do the heavy lifting of content moderation, it's a step in the right direction.
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