I thought I would share a curio at which I was pointed this morning.
It seems that there are lots of places out on the internet, for example Instagram (about which I know nothing, beyond the fact that a lot of people use it), where people who have made an eating disorder lifestyle choice can share - people who are a big public health problem in some countries.
In response to pressure, Instagram at least tried to damp this sharing down. First, they stopped a small number (17) of eating disorder words - for example bonespo and thighgap - from being used in searches and, second, they added warning pop-ups called advisories to results which included such words.
According to a study by Georgia Tech (googling 'georgia tech eating disorder instagram' will get you most of the way there), this damping down has not worked. The people with eating disorders rapidly evolved the shared use of uncontrolled variations of the banned words and their activities continued unabated. Indeed, according to Georgia Tech, who can be found at reference 1, shared use by this community went up rather than down.
The experts are now pondering on what else, if anything might be done. How to square the circle of helping people with a serious problem without infringing their, or anyone else's human rights. As so often, a question of judgement - but whether we manage to make the right judgement call in this tricky area remains to be seen.
Maybe part of the answer is that we, collectively, have to feel our way. There is no magic bullet.
PS: I am reminded of my dim view of the smoking ban, at the time it was introduced. My line as a light smoker was that banning, in such a strong way, something which consenting adults chose to do to themselves, was not right. Not to mention the massive fall-out arising from the abuse of entirely legal and freely available alcohol by said consulting adults. Now that I am a non-smoker, I am not so sure, although, on balance, I still think the ban went a bit far.
Reference 1: http://www.gatech.edu/.
Reference 2: https://www.instagram.com/.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram.
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