Board to Analyze Eating Disorders Awareness-Raising Content
15 de julio de 2025
Today, the Board is announcing new cases for consideration. As part of this, we invite people and organizations to submit public comments by using the button below.
Case Selection
As we cannot hear every appeal, the Board prioritizes cases that have the potential to affect lots of users around the world, are of critical importance to public discourse or raise important questions about Meta’s policies.
The cases that we are announcing today are:
Eating Disorder Awareness Posts
2025-048-IG-UA, 2025-049-IG-UA
User appeals to restore content
Submit a public comment using the button below
The Oversight Board will address the two cases below together, choosing either to uphold or overturn Meta’s decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Two Instagram users shared multiple images in their posts (which Meta terms a “photo carousel”) with captions during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week in 2023 and 2025, respectively.
The first photo carousel includes identifiable photos of the user. The caption shares a personal account of having experienced an eating disorder, a desire to educate people on such disorders and gratitude for support.
The second photo carousel involves several images with text, in which the user, who self-identifies as a mental health professional, provides advice on how to talk about the weight and size of people perceived to be skinny or underweight. It includes examples of inappropriate statements with alternative suggestions on how to address these issues more sensitively. The third image in the carousel advises people not to guess someone’s clothing size and to avoid commenting that people may be wasting away. Additionally, the post’s caption notes that while the user hasn’t personally experienced an eating disorder, people have made comments about their perceived low weight.
In late February 2025, the day after the second carousel was posted, Meta’s automated systems identified the carousel’s third image as potentially violating and sent it for at-scale review by a human moderator. Similarly, Meta’s automated systems identified the first post and sent it for human review in March 2025, more than two years after it was posted. The first post’s full photo carousel and only the third image of the second carousel were visible to the reviewers who determined both violated Meta’s Suicide, Self-Injury and Eating Disorders policy.
This policy prohibits people from “intentionally or unintentionally celebrat[ing] or promot[ing] suicide, self-injury or eating disorders,” but allows users to “share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another.” Meta differentiates between content that “encourages” eating disorders, either explicitly or through means such as providing instructions, and content that speaks
“positively” about an eating disorder, without encouraging others. Both are subject to removal, with only the former resulting in a strike.
Meta removed the first post entirely, and the third image in the second post, leaving the rest of the second carousel on Instagram. The first user didn’t receive a strike as the human reviewer determined the post was shared in a “positive” promotional context. The second user received a severe strike and 30-day feature limit, preventing them from going live and posting ads as the human reviewer concluded the post was shared in an “encouraging” promotional context.
Both users appealed Meta’s decisions. During each review, a reviewer found the content non-violating, but a second reviewer was unable to complete the review of the entire carousel as images failed to load in internal tooling. Meta upheld its decisions to remove both posts.
Both users then appealed to the Board. In their statements, the users explained that they intended to raise awareness about eating disorders and recovery. The first user noted they shared a personal story without any graphic imagery, and the second user stated they contrasted harmful expressions with advice on how to communicate more sensitively.
When the Board selected these cases, Meta’s subject matter experts reviewed these posts again and concluded that both were shared in non-violating contexts. The company reversed its original decisions, restored both posts and reversed the strike on the second user’s account.
The Board selected these cases to assess how Meta’s policies and enforcement practices address awareness-raising content or support resources related to eating disorders and recovery. These cases fall within the Board’s Gender and Automated Enforcement of Policies and Curation of Content priorities.
The Board would appreciate public comments that address:
- Enforcement challenges in distinguishing between content promoting eating disorders and content raising awareness about eating disorders and discussing recovery and ways to address those challenges.
- Insights into how social media companies prevent or mitigate potential harms from content promoting eating disorders, besides removal.
- Studies on the effects of sharing or receiving information, resources or support on social media on people with or recovering from eating disorders, in particular young people.
- Meta’s enforcement of content comprising multiple parts, such as a carousel of several images, particularly the impact on freedom of expression of removing one image in a photo carousel.
- Meta’s approach to content moderation tools and practices when launching news features and content types.
As part of its decisions, the Board can issue policy recommendations to Meta. While recommendations are not binding, Meta must respond to them within 60 days. As such, the Board welcomes public comments proposing recommendations that are relevant to the issues raised in these cases.
Public Comments
If you or your organization feel you can contribute valuable perspectives that can help with reaching a decision on the cases announced today, you can submit your contributions using the button below. Please note that public comments can be provided anonymously. The public comment window is open for 14 days, closing at 23.59 Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Tuesday 29 July.
What’s Next
Over the next few weeks, Board Members will be deliberating this cases. Once they have reached their decision, we will post it on the Decisions page.
