Instagram is "taking a harder look" at how the photo and video sharing app affects different communities, starting with Black users, according to the app's top executive, Adam Mosseri. In a blog post Monday, Mosseri said Facebook-owned Instagram has been "hearing concern about whether we suppress Black voices and whether our products and policies treat everyone equally." While Instagram -- with more than a 1 billion monthly users -- is "a platform that stands for elevating Black voices," he wrote,...
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Mosseri endured a firestorm of controversy after internal research leaked in September 2021, showing Instagram has an adverse effect on the mental health of teenage users, causing 32% to have a worse body image of themselves while directly leading 13% of British teens and 6% of U.S. teens to contemplate suicide. The revelation was painfully ironic because so much of Mosseri’s public messaging has been about measures he’s taking to make the app safe for young users, such as enabling them to block others from seeing how many likes their posts receive and banning images of self-harm. Also in September, the company tabled its planned Instagram app for kids under 13 after 44 U.S. attorney generals wrote a letter calling for it to abandon the project. All that said, Instagram is leaving 2021 on a high note, as the platform allegedly sports more than 2 billion monthly active users now, per insiders.
