By: The Guardian
April 15, 2021
Instagram has apologised for a “mistake” that meant it promoted weight-loss content to users with eating disorders.
A new feature on the social network provides users with suggested search terms based on their interests, with default prompts including terms such as “yard work”, “home decor” or “sunsets”. But some people with eating disorders found the app was prompting them to search for terms like “appetite suppressant” instead, raising the risk of a relapse or worse.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the inclusion of such harmful terms, first reported by the BBC, was an oversight and it had removed them in an update.
“To help people discover content they’re interested in, we recently rolled out a new way to search on Instagram beyond hashtags and usernames, where you tap on the search bar and we suggest topics you may want to search for,” the company said in a statement.