Instagram's ban on search terms such as 'thigh gap' and 'thinspiration' only made the network's pro-anorexia problem worse, according to new research.
According to the Georgia Tech team, banning these terms didn't stop young people searching for them -- they simply worked around the ban by creating variants. Some of these terms had even further reach than those they were designed to replace, spreading to other sites such as Tumblr and Twitter.
Instagram banned phrases such 'anorexia', 'proana', 'thinspiration', 'thighgap' and 'imugly' in April 2012, meaning anyone searching for the terms was met with a blank screen. If a user searches for the hashtag 'thinspiration', for example, Instagram simply claims that no posts can be found. "Moderation in April 2012 led to the emergence of lexical variants of banned tags," the team wrote in a paper. "Next, while in general the sizes of these communities adopting lexical variant tags were smaller relative to the corresponding root tag, some lexical variation communities disproportionally increased in size."
'Thighgap' became 'thyghgapp'; 'thinspo' became 'thinspooooo'. Only seventeen terms were banned by Instagram, but according to the Georgia Tech researchers, there were 250 variations -- many of which promoted even more triggering material. "These variants were extensively used to continue to share information encouraging adoption and maintenance of pro eating disorder lifestyles, often to also share more triggering, vulnerable and self-harm related content," the researchers wrote.
The team argued that moderation may not be the best way to mitigate the effects of problematic content, and describe moderation as enacting "negative consequences". They concluded that content moderation had been "mostly ineffective at decelerating the dissemination and proliferation of pro-ED behaviour on the platform".
Instead, they suggest, platforms like Instagram should redirect search terms -- when someone searches for 'thinspiration', for example, they should be served images of people recovering from eating disorders, recommended healthy eating options or be offered "social or clinical help".
Instagram told WIRED that it now provides a message before users see flagged content rather than making hashtags unsearchable.
Update 15/03/16, 14:50: This story has been updated to include a response from Instagram.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
