Instagram acknowledges prejudice on platform, promises change

Image: AFP/Denis Charlet via AFP Relaxnews

Instagram published a blog post admitting to the presence of racial prejudice on the platform, specifically that of against black subscribers. Following this confession, the company announced that it’s taking a series of actions to reduce, and hopefully, put an end to this discrimination.

On Monday, head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, published an article on the company’s blog acknowledging the existence of racial discrimination on the platform and directly within the company, promising that he and his team would work to reduce this and outlining a plan of action to combat it.

Mosseri stated, “We need to better support the Black community within our own organization, as well as on our platform.”

The actions that the company will be taking have been divided into four main categories: harassment, account verification, distribution and algorithmic bias.

To start, Instagram will combat harassment that Black people face both on and off the platform caused by “potential gaps in how our products and policies protect people from those issues.”

Secondly, the platform’s account verification criteria will be reviewed to ensure certain groups aren’t favored over others.

The way in which content is selected and surfaces within the Explore tab and on Hashtag pages will be reviewed for prejudiced filtration.

Finally, the algorithm that powers the platform will be investigated.

“While we do a lot of work to help prevent subconscious bias in our products, we need to take a harder look at the underlying systems we’ve built, and where we need to do more to keep bias out of these decisions,” said Mosseri.

Not only will these changes fight the discrimination of minorities on the platform, but they will also help combat the systemic discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, body positivity activists and artists. JB

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