Social media giant, Instagram has come under fire in recent times for failing to adequately protect its users from harmful impacts to their mental wellbeing.
Now, a new report suggests that the platform supports an “epidemic of misogynistic abuse”, with high profile women coming forward to relay the vitriolic messages they have been subjected to, and the systemic failure of Instagram and its owner, Meta.
Released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the report analysed thousands of messages sent to five well known Instagram users including, actor Amber Heard, UK television presenter Rachel Riley, activist Jamie Klingler, journalist Bryony Gordon, and magazine founder Sharan Dhaliwal.
A cache of 8,717 messages from the women who participated were reviewed, with reporters adding further insight into the “negligent” approach by Instagram to address a burgeoning crisis.
Concerns raised within the research, include the fact that users are unable to report abusive voice notes sent directly to them, users cannot report messages sent in “vanish mode” – when an image is shown just briefly before disappearing – without viewing them, and that users struggle to download evidence of abusive messages.
Instagram also enables strangers to send voice calls to women they don’t know over direct message. Faith Eischen, a spokeswoman from Meta, justified this to researchers, suggesting that when a voice call on Instagram is made, the call is displayed to users as a request that must be accepted to hear.
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive director of CCDH slammed the social media giant, saying “Meta and Instagram must put the rights of women before profit”, adding “there is an epidemic of misogynist abuse taking place in women’s DMs.”
Difficulties also persist for women to access and record evidence of abuse through the platform. Participants who had previously blocked abusive users could not access the full “requests” dataset.
Researchers claim that such challenges mark a broader problem in the quest to address widespread harassment online where death threats, abuse, and unsolicited videos and images are regularly sent without recourse. Amber Heard also reported receiving “error” messages when trying to download her own data, condemning Instagram’s reporting function as “not user friendly, not intuitive, not common sense based.”
Meta’s head of women’s safety, Cindy Southworth refuted “many of the CCDH’s conclusions” but said the company agreed “the harassment of women is unacceptable”.
“That’s why we don’t allow gender-based hate or any threat of sexual violence, and last year we announced stronger protections for female public figures,” she said.
This latest research follows a leak last year which showed Meta had withheld its own research on the harmful effects of Instagram for two years, including stats surrounding the damage to mental health that the social platform poses to teenage girls.
Journalists at the Wall Street Journal reported seeing a slide from an internal presentation given within Facebook in 2019, with the company acknowledging that it “makes body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls.”
Despite this, Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg declared last year that social media had positive mental health impacts for its users, while head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, said that he was aware of research that suggests its effects on teenagers’ mental health was probably “quite small”.