Tara Hopkins, EMEA’s head of public policy at Instagram, said Instagram also hides search terms – but only if the phrase itself is promoting or encouraging self-harm. “For other search terms related to suicide/self-harm that are not inherently infringing, we will display a support message before showing any results.” The company declined to share how many search terms were blocked.
Instagram-owned Meta says it is addressing concerns about children’s safety with young people’s freedom of expression. The company admitted that the two posts that Molly saw and took to court violated Instagram’s policy at the time. But Elizabeth Lagone, head of health and well-being policy at Meta, told the inquest last week that it was important to give people that voice if they were struggling with suicidal thoughts. . When the Russell family’s attorney, Oliver Sanders, asked Lagone if she agreed that the content Molly viewed and the court considered “unsafe”, Lagone replied, “I think people can express themselves It’s safe.”
These comments represent what researchers say are major differences between the two platforms. Samuel Woolley, program director of the propaganda research lab at the University of Texas, Austin, said: “Pinterest is more concerned with having content that is decisive, clear, and removing platforms that don’t meet standards. their standards. “Instagram and Facebook… tend to be more concerned with fighting free speech.”
Pinterest doesn’t always work like this. Hoffman told the investigation that Pinterest’s guidelines used to be “when in doubt, lean toward… gentler content moderation.” But Molly’s death in 2017 coincided with the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, when Pinterest was implicated in spreading Russian propaganda. Around that time, Pinterest began banning all topics that didn’t fit the platform’s mission, such as vaccines or conspiracy theories.
That is in stark contrast to Instagram. “Meta platforms, including Instagram, are guided by the imperative to exist as infrastructure information tools. [like] phone or [telecoms company] Woolley said AT&T, not the social media companies. Facebook should not be the “arbiter of truth”, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Debate in 2020.
The investigation also highlights the difference between the transparency levels of the two platforms. “Pinterest provides helpful documentation of Molly’s activities on Pinterest, including not only the pins Molly has saved, but also the pins she [clicked] Varney said. Meta never provided the court with that level of detail, and much of the information the company shared was redacted, she added. For example, the company revealed that in the six months before her death, Molly was referred to 30 accounts with names that dealt with themes of sadness or depression. However, the actual names of those accounts have been redacted, with the platform citing user privacy.
Varney agrees that both platforms have seen improvements since 2017. Pinterest results for self-harm search terms don’t contain the same level of graphic material as they did five years ago, she said. . But Instagram’s changes were too little, too late, she claimed, adding that Meta didn’t ban offensive images of self-harm and suicide until 2019.
