Business Molly Russell: Instagram extends self-harm ban to drawings - Instagram bans drawings, cartoons and memes about suicide after father blames the platform for his daughter's death in 2017

Molly Russell: Instagram extends self-harm ban to drawings

The father of a teenager who killed herself after viewing graphic images says the app needs to act.

www.bbc.co.uk

Instagram has pledged to remove images, drawings and even cartoons showing methods of self-harm or suicide.

The move is its latest response to the public outcry over the death of British teenager Molly Russell.

The 14-year-old killed herself in 2017 after viewing graphic content on the platform.

Molly's father has described the Facebook-owned app's commitment as "sincere" but said managers needed to act more swiftly.

Instagram's latest promise covers explicit drawings, cartoons and memes about suicide, in addition to any other method "promoting" self-harm.

"It will take time to fully implement... but it's not going to be the last step we take," Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told BBC News.

It extends measures announced in February, which banned "graphic images of self-harm" and restricted those with suicidal themes. This included both stills and videos.

Instagram has been under pressure to act after Mr Russell said he believed the US-based service had been partly responsible for his daughter's death .

After she died, Mr Russell found large amounts of graphic material about self-harm and suicide on her Instagram account. He also found similar content on her Pinterest login.

The 56-year-old went public in January of this year.

The UK government, charities and the media were among those who subsequently called on Instagram and other technology companies to make changes.

'Lack of responsibility'
Instagram's latest announcement coincided with a visit by Mr Russell to Silicon Valley.

There, he told BBC News: "The big platforms really don't seem to be doing much about it."

During his visit, Florida-based internet safety campaigner and paediatrician Dr Free Hess showed him content still available on Instagram.

It included graphic photographs, videos of self-harm and cartoons advocating suicide.

She said hashtags had helped lead young people to the content.

"It's grooming that young person to self-harm more, consider suicide more," the doctor said.

Ian responded: "I was rather hoping that the steps taken would made it at least harder to find that stuff."

Mr Russell also met Jim Steyer, the founder of Common Sense Media - the US's largest charity dealing with child safety online.

"The lack of responsibility of the social media platforms is absolutely mindboggling," said Mr Steyer, who wants new regulations to be imposed on the companies.

Instagram response
Instagram says it has doubled the amount of material removed related to self-harm and suicide since the first quarter of 2019.

Between April and June this year, it said, it had removed 834,000 pieces of content, 77% of which had not been reported by users.

"There is still very clearly more work to do, this work never ends," said Mr Mosseri.

To which Mr Russell responded: "I just hope he delivers."

 

[The Last Stand]

We live in a society...
I guess Looney Tunes are banned from Instagram then.

 

[Digital Thunder]

Understandable. Instagram’s been a pretty large haven of pro-ana/mia, ednos, and general self-harm (e.g. cutting) posting over the years, and the collection of hashtags that have that “Do you need help?” warning has gotten pretty big within the last few years.

Say what you will about memes and it being kicked off further because “muh kid is die”, but impressionable kids—especially girls—pick up on it fast and the Instagram communities dedicated to this shit are hiveminds. The glorifiers are obviously gonna pack up shop and skitter off somewhere else with it, but I get wanting to do something over having lost your kid to Facebook 2.

 

[AnOminous]

Understandable. Instagram’s been a pretty large haven of pro-ana/mia, ednos, and general self-harm (e.g. cutting) posting over the years, and the collection of hashtags that have that “Do you need help?” warning has gotten pretty big within the last few years.

They don't really care if kids kill themselves, just whether they get blamed for it. So long as they just crawl off alone and hang themselves, they couldn't care less.

 

[Digital Thunder]

They don't really care if kids kill themselves, just whether they get blamed for it. So long as they just crawl off alone and hang themselves, they couldn't care less.

Of course. Plus, people will just find other ways to post the same material while getting around the blockade, and with how basic Instagram’s moderation is they take ages to follow up on any bypassing provided they ever bother.

 

[metroid_fetish]

lol, his kid is dead.

 

[AnOminous]

lol, his kid is dead.

Honestly I fucking despise these shitty parents who failed at the one job they had and then blame everyone but themselves and want to fuck up the Internet, or whatever, to try to atone for shit they can never make right anyway.

 

[Chicken Picnic]

Say what you will about memes and it being kicked off further because “muh kid is die”, but impressionable kids—especially girls—pick up on it fast and the Instagram communities dedicated to this shit are hiveminds. The glorifiers are obviously gonna pack up shop and skitter off somewhere else with it, but I get wanting to do something over having lost your kid to Facebook 2.

No offence but if your kid is cutting themselves there is probably a much bigger reason than "they saw it online" and stuff like this comes across as parents to find someone to blame for their kid's problems. This happened in the UK, child mental health services here are renowned for being shit here and that is more of an issue than people drawing pictures relating to self harm/depression or making memes saying they're dead inside.

Self harming isn't considered cool, you'll be bullied to shit if people at school saw your arms cut up. Your kid likely is already depressed if they see something like that and think yeah that's a good idea let me try.

 

[The Final Troondown]

'my kid killed herself because of instagram maymays' is one of the most ridiculous takes I've ever heard, even for a grieving boomer parent
Teenagers get depressed, depressed people kill themselves sometimes, it was ever thus

 

[TokiBun]

He should have gotten his kid some help and monitored her internet usage. She’s 14–she’s barely a teenager. If her parents had any sense in them they would follow her social media and check it for anything related to self harm.
This block isn’t going to do a thing.

 

[Clop]

The 14-year-old killed herself in 2017 after viewing graphic content on the platform.

Thousands of years of evolution and culture and fuckers still can't grasp correlation not being causation.

After she died, Mr Russell found large amounts of graphic material about self-harm and suicide on her Instagram account. He also found similar content on her Pinterest login.

This man is a fucking idiot. There is no nice way to say this, no amount of grief is an excuse. He is a fucking idiot. She was collecting memes on suicide because she was feeling suicidal, you fucking twat, not the other way around.

 

[Mister Loser]

Jokes about self-harm are pretty common, and as @Clop above said, it's a method of coping. You see depressed kids make depression jokes to cope, those who see or make self-harm references are more than likely fairly depressed or even extremely depressed themselves.
It's sad to see people not understanding how children work— sure, they may be impressionable, but they're not stupid. They know what they're doing. It's your job as a parent to talk with your kid about these issues, and not be blind to them and then blame the system for them dying.

 

[It's HK-47]

Jokes about self-harm are pretty common, and as @Clop above said, it's a method of coping. You see depressed kids make depression jokes to cope, those who see or make self-harm references are more than likely fairly depressed or even extremely depressed themselves.
It's sad to see people not understanding how children work— sure, they may be impressionable, but they're not stupid. They know what they're doing. It's your job as a parent to talk with your kid about these issues, and not be blind to them and then blame the system for them dying.

It's hilarious that they all assume that a kid is just this unquestioning machine that will literally terminate itself if it's told to. Anyone who's spent more than two seconds around a kid knows damned well that kids go out of their way to do the opposite of what they're told. You can send a kid off to put on his shoes and half-an-hour later the little fucker's bathing the cat in the toilet.

You can't even ask him why, because he won't have an answer. Well, he will, but it won't make a single bit of fucking sense and he still won't be wearing shoes. I guess that a 14 year-old girl is bound to be more volatile than that, but if you wind up necking yourself because someone meme'd about it on Instagram then you were probably going to kill yourself anyways.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

So, the kid died and I assume a major influence was how the parents neglected her emotionally.
Now, they sort of neglect her further by not looking into the actual causes but rather by claiming that merely looking at images of self-harm made their innocent, cheerful daughter commit suicide for no reason. Sure, being depressed and hanging out in sad-sack forums isn't gonna help, but I do think that if the kid had any confidence in their parents' ability to help, she would have asked them.

It's not like Tumblr shutting that content down will do anything.

Tumblr:
"Please don't post anything that is or appears to be about self-harm!"
4Chan:

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Just sayin'...

The 14-year-old killed herself in 2017 after viewing graphic content on the platform.

After she died, Mr Russell found large amounts of graphic material about self-harm and suicide on her Instagram account. He also found similar content on her Pinterest login.

The 56-year-old went public in January of this year.

The link between parental age and autism, explained

Epidemiologists have gathered data on large numbers of families and calculated how often men of different ages have a child with autism. The first rigorous study of this type, published in 2006, drew on medical records of 132,000 Israeli adolescents. It showed that men in their 30s are 1.6 times as likely to have a child with autism as men under 30. Men in their 40s have a sixfold increase in risk.

 

[Hux]

This happened in the UK, child mental health services here are renowned for being shit here

To be entirely fair, where the fuck isn't mental health services absolute shit in the first place?

 

[Chicken Picnic]

To be entirely fair, where the fuck isn't mental health services absolute shit in the first place?

True, though I was more commenting on the fact the father should be complaining to the services if anything. But, to be fair, they can only help if they knew she was struggling and by the looks of this he had no clue his daughter was even depressed let alone suicidal.

 

[Coleslaw]

Just sayin'...





The link between parental age and autism, explained

Well they are Israeli.

 

[AnOminous]

Self harming isn't considered cool, you'll be bullied to shit if people at school saw your arms cut up. Your kid likely is already depressed if they see something like that and think yeah that's a good idea let me try.

If your kid says she's depressed and wants to kill herself, scream at her to shut the fuck up and then blame the Internet when she becomes an hero.

 

[vertexwindi]

If your kid says she's depressed and wants to kill herself, scream at her to shut the fuck up and then blame the Internet when she becomes an hero.

I tried that and now she's fucking dead, I'm suing the Farms.