Slashdot Mirror
Instagram Vows To Remove All Graphic Self-Harm Images From Site (bbc.com)
All graphic images of self-harm will be removed from Instagram, the head of the social media platform has told the BBC. From a report: The move comes after the father of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017, said Instagram had "helped kill" his daughter. Molly's family found she had been viewing graphic images of self-harm on the site prior to her death. Adam Mosseri said Instagram was trying to balance "the need to act now and the need to act responsibly". He added the site was "not where we need to be on the issues of self-harm and suicide". When asked by the BBC's Angus Crawford when the images would be removed, Mr Mosseri replied: "As quickly as we can, responsibly." Molly's father Ian Russell welcomed Instagram's commitment and said he hoped they would act swiftly to implement their plans.
...keep them off social media.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Does this mean theyâ(TM)ll ban all trannies from posting pictures of themselves??
I can sympathize with her family, what a sad experience.
But here is the big problem if you are going to sanitize Instagram or other Social media because you are somehow responsible for killing people with depression or mental illness.
Depressed people often see happy people, and become angry or more depressed. Might an image of a happy person be the trigger for them finally killing themselves? So Perhaps Instagram needs to police and eliminate images of people having a good time because if they don't, they murdered someone.
This policing is showing a remarkable misunderstanding of depression and mental illness.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A quick trip over to Google images and typing in "Self Harm" brings up... pictures of people who've done self harm to themselves. So what exactly does this solve?
The truth is the little girl needed help from mental health professionals, and didn't get it. It had nothing to do with Instagram. The only reason Instagram is taking it down is they fear a twitter-war response.
Kids tend to be social creatures by nature, and have a lot more time to get around your rules than you have to enforce them. Much more valuable is to actually listen to your kids, particularly pre-teens and teens. Like shut up for 15 minutes and let them talk and answer with things like "why" and "what caused that" and shut your mouth when you want to say "that's stupid". Yes, it takes more maturity than they have, but you be the adult.
...
So that means no images with someone who's used Botox, no images of someone drunk, no images of someone smoking, no images of someone with a cast on, no images of any kind of piercings, I could go on.
When you throw out a generic term like "self harm" your going to exclude a lot more stuff than you ever intended. For example, I might classify a tattoo as self harm, some might not. Pretty soon all we end up with is cute cat pictures playing with yarn because, awwwwe.
Stop trying to bubble wrap the world. My bigger concern would have been that my child was seeking out self harm images in the first place.
"took her own life" and '"helped kill" his daughter'. How about if you want people to not take their own life, you do more than make it more difficult by removing helpful advice? How about if you talk upfront about suicide, offer to talk with them, or more importantly offer them somewhere/someone else they can talk to? How about we acknowledge that as much as you try, some people have an overwhelming desire to commit suicide and there's really no way to stop them short of tying them down to a bed and keeping them constantly sedated--so keep your expectations in check?
Nah. Let's blame a soulless corporation. I'm sure that'll solve things.
An argument could be made that exposing someone to images on Instagram might be harmful, so just to be sure, remove them all. Better get rid of the text as well. That should make more room for the ads.
(whisper whisper)
They're what? Made of pictures? Get rid of them, too!
Hrm.
The bulk of the cutters and other-self harm people I've known over the years did so, in part, out of a need for agency and control over their own body. Perhaps I am being unfair, but every time I hear a parent complain about 'my kids learned cutting from XYZ and then kill themselves', I wonder just how abusive the parent was and now they are trying to blame someone else.
...welcome our "go to the lowest common denominator and impose it on all" overlords.
So lets all be snowflakes and demand reparations for anything that offends us.
Social media is starting to look like some sort of shared psychosis where people forget how to interact with other people and are only learning to interact with themselves. Especially because they only get attention in the form of likes which causes them to do ever more extreme things to get attention. This can't be a good thing for mental health.
I'm completely against censorship though because when people attempt to control the flow of ideas they are assuming a dictatorial role which, in and of itself, imbues the censor with a sense of power that corrupts them no matter how pure their intentions or morals are. Communism and fascism has shown us just how bad this can become.
So whilst picture of self harm are extreme images, that I personally would not like to view, they do serve as an indicator of the amount of mental sickness we have in society. In reality the images are people screaming for help that warns others and the censor becomes the enabler that allows the shared psychosis to go unchallenged in society.
This is the heavy burden of responsibility we all share for maintaining free speech no matter how ugly it becomes because the people who do this are the "canary in a cage" warning us that our society has a problem.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If they actually wanted to help people, then they could have data mined those images and put up self-help ads next to them and shown them to people who often viewed those images. Instead, they're making everyone else on the site look happier which'll make the depressed people feel like they're even more of a screw up and they will feel more oppressed because if they express how they actually feel they'll get banned.
I've attempted suicide and have experience with long term depression. It takes more than a picture to cause someone to kill themselves. If some picture is the final trigger, then it wouldn't have been long before something else was the final trigger. At least the self-harm people have a coping strategy (the pain lets you feel something, helps mask the depression, and you can have a sense of pride over your control of cutting yourself which something most normal people are too afraid to do), removing it will increase their rate of successful suicides. Instagram's change will kill more people than it will help. Denying reality rarely helps in the long run.
Lets ban porn next because people get raped.
Grrrr!!-lllll power!
Got all prohormones/steroids banned. One kid killed himself on purpose. One kid took away everyone's ability to use stuff that works to lose weight/gain muscle and help your health. One kid! Absolutely crazy. Of course recently one rich person who owns a casino got cross state online gambling banned again. Sigh.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A few weeks ago a friend committed suicide. In amongst all the grief was the question, "could we have done more to help her and maybe prevent her taking this step?"
So I get the impulse to remove easy access to certain information: you want to prevent copycat behavior.
On the other hand, people with more experience in this area all said, "no, it's impossible to prevent this" and they're right. You can't control another person's thoughts. Someone with suicidal intent will do their best to hide that from the people around them (lest they be committed to the loony bin).
There are places that deserve more scrutiny: suicide and self-harm 'self-help groups' where members egg each other on.
Why don't you put the responsibility with the parents or children themselves. I know the might be graphic images, but do we really need to hide everything so some emotional/instable person might not do something to her-/himself? She propably would still have killed herself even if she didn't have seen those images.
What's next? not being allowed to talk about selfharm or suicide, because it might trigger some person to do it to themselves?
with the internet at your fingertips, you're only a few clicks away from any information/picture you want to see.
if she wouldn't have found it on instagram, more then a few other sites would have provided similar pictures (and finding those sites is also not very difficult).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Instagram or media doesn't kill. Poor parenting does.
On obtaining a better understanding of suicide, the below is from a book review I put here: https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
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Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain
by David Conroy
https://www.amazon.com/Out-Nig...
"Out of the Nightmare. An all-out assault on the barriers that stand between you and recovery from depression and suicidal pain. decomposes recovery from depression into recovery from envy, shame, self-pity, grandiosity, fear, stigma, social abuse, and the double binds and vicious circles of the mythology of suicide. A drug-free approach to getting better and staying better. This book provides counselors with a bold new non-technical framework that is free from the prejudices that deter the suicidal from seeking help. It provides those who have lost a loved one to suicide with a broad array of new conceptual tools to understand the tragedy and to find help for stuck positions of bereavement. Most importantly, it provides all those who suffer from depression with hundreds of resources to find their way out of the nightmare."
A suicide by an employee or within the families of employees touches many lives and can significantly impact productivity. Along with advice for suicidal individuals, the book includes suggestion for first responders, counselors, friends, and those who sadly are survivors of someone else's suicide. A major focus of the book includes deconstructing harmful ideas surrounding how people often think about or respond to those who have suicidal ideation and suggesting a more effective way of thinking about suicide prevention called the aggregate pain model.
Some key ideas from the book are summarized here:
https://www.metanoia.org/suici...
"Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain. That's all it's about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn't even mean that you really want to die - it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse if I add enough weights... no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Of course you would cheer yourself up, if you could. Don't accept it if someone tells you, "That's not enough to be suicidal about." There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain. When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources. You can survive suicidal feelings if you do either of two things: (1) find a way to reduce your pain, or (2) find a way to increase your coping resources. Both are possible."
One of the fundamental challenges in an organization or society is to destigmatize asking for help to avoid the classic dillema those with suicidal thoughts face when they expect asking for help will only increase their pain from whatever reactions occur -- such as job loss or being ejected from a university community. By reconceptualizing suicide as an involuntary action that occurs when total pain exceeds resources for coping with pain, David Conroy provides a morally neutral way for organizations and society to think about suicide prevention in a productive way. Rather than focus mainly on intervening in a crisis, organizations can rethink their operations to reduce participant
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I recently learned a friend from college (probably) committed suicide several years ago, and like you I have spent a lot of time thinking about what were the causes and how it could have been prevented.
On prevention, see my previous post which cites this book by David Conroy and related website:
https://www.amazon.com/Out-Nig...
https://www.metanoia.org/suici...
The key idea is to destigmatize asking for help due to suicidal thoughts by having our society view suicide as an *involuntary* act that occurs when pain exceeds coping resources. Anything that can reduce pain (including physical pain, but also social or emotional pain) or increase coping resources (such as emphatic listening) helps prevent suicide. Unfortunately, when suicide is seen in some other ways more common in our culture, the end result is often that more pain just tends to be heaped on existing pain when people reach out for help (so many people learn to avoid asking for help related to suicidal thoughts). So, David Conroy's reconceptualization makes sense to help caring individuals and organizations to think of ways to reduce pain and increase coping resources through daily activities for everyone and not mainly as some last ditch "suicide prevention" intervention.
David Conroy does make the point that limiting access to means or information is to an extent a "coping resource" so I doubt he would be against the Instagram move or cracking down on the groups you mention where people egg each other on.
But ultimately, progress is going to be best made by making people's lives happier and less painful day-to-day, and giving people a true sense that other people and society have their backs and want to help them. However, that is a much larger project than a few crackdowns like with Instagram.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I wonder if over eating would be considered self harm....
Instagram announced today that all images providing some potential for damage to vulnerable viewers will henceforth be banned, and the only photos that will be allowed will be soft, furry kittens. They may be sleeping or playing with each other, as long as no claws are visible in the photo. So, we all will be able to continue exercising our free-speech rights without harming anyone.
Instead of blaming everyone else for his daughter's suicide, he should look at himself. Parents are the main cause for children's suicide. Unsupportive parents cause suicides.
If they really want to prevent suicides (which they don't obviously) social media sites should instead focus on bullying and on creating safe spaces where these kids (and adults for that matter) can get the support they lack.
The Internet is not going to become a safe place for vulnerable people. Not while it's people who are trying to accomplish that. All persons are vulnerable, whether they realize it or not is only the difference between the level of ego a person has. If you make it illegal to tell someone to "go kill themselves", it's going to infringe on 1st amendment rights. If you tell people it's okay to tell someone to "go kill themselves", they will, and vulnerable suicidal teens will go and do that and their parents will be mad at Instagram. The root cause is identifying why someone would have the need to bully someone to try to get them to suicide and follow that to its cause. That of course will also infringe on that person's rights. Soooooooo, either accept it for what it is, or don't use it. I think as a society we are a little too obsessed with the Internet right now, hyper-communication is an issue for sure. I grew up through those years with little to no Internet, and anybody who told me to go kill myself was usually within grabbing distance, and not able to whisper it to my ear from the other side of the planet. Maybe that's better. It's just progress but progress is not always for the better.