Eating Disorder Awareness Posts Bundle

UPDATED JAN 16, 2026
Today, July 15, 2025, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by Instagram users regarding two photo carousel posts shared during National Eating Disorder Awareness Weeks in separate years.
The first piece of content, posted in 2023, concerns a caption that shared a personal account of experiencing an eating disorder, expressing a desire to raise awareness, and conveying gratitude for support.
The second piece of content, posted in 2025, concerns images with text from a user who self-identifies as a mental health professional. The images with text provide advice on how to talk about the weight and size of people perceived to be skinny or under-weight, includes examples of inappropriate statements, advises people not to guess someone’s clothing size, and suggests avoiding commenting that people may be wasting away. The accompanying caption notes that while the user has not personally experienced an eating disorder, people have made comments about their perceived low weight.
Upon initial review, Meta took down the first piece of content entirely and one photo in the photo carousel of the second piece of content for violating our policy on Suicide, Self-Injury and Eating Disorders, as laid out in the Community Standards. However, upon additional review, we determined we removed these pieces of content in error and reinstated the posts. While Meta prohibits “intentionally or unintentionally celebrat[ing] or promot[ing] suicide, self-injury or eating disorders,” our policy does allow users to “share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another.”
We will implement the Board's decision once it has finished deliberating, and will update this post accordingly. Please see the Board's website for the decision when they issue it.
Read the board’s case selection summary
Case decision
We welcome the Oversight Board's decision on this case bundle. The Board overturned Meta's original decisions to fully remove one post and to remove part of a second photo carousel. Meta previously reinstated this content and, as a result, no further action will be taken on the case content.
When it is technically and operationally possible to do so, we will also take action on content that is identical and in the same context as this case. For more information, please see our Newsroom post about how we implement the Board's decisions.
After conducting a review of the recommendation provided by the Board, we will update this post with an initial response.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1 (implementing fully)
Meta should share the specific measures it takes to prevent overenforcement of content during awareness-raising periods, such as the Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and whether these measures differ from those applied at other times in the enforcement of such content.
The Board will consider this recommendation implemented when Meta shares the concrete steps it has taken to avoid overenforcement regarding awareness-raising periods.
Our commitment: Below, we have compiled a list of specific measures that we take to prevent overenforcement of content during awareness-raising periods. This represents the first consolidated description of these initiatives on our Transparency Center, and with this, we now consider the recommendation fully implemented.
Considerations: Under our policies, we remove any content that encourages eating disorders and may also direct users who post or search for related content to local organizations that can provide support. However, we want our services to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness, and seek support from one another for these issues. Therefore, in some circumstances, we allow people to discuss these topics, though we may restrict their reach to users aged 18 or older and use warning screens.
Furthermore, within our Global Response organization, we have a specific program that aims to reduce over-enforcement on content. This program is dedicated to identifying, triaging, and resolving false positive trends and high-risk escalations. It addresses over-enforcement by investigating cases raised internally and externally, including those flagged by our risk detection teams and external parties. For each case, this program conducts a root cause analysis, summarizes the findings, and ensures the responsible team implements appropriate mitigation measures to prevent recurrence. If a trend in false positives related to our Suicide, Self-Injury, and Eating Disorders policy is identified (during an awareness-raising period or otherwise), this program investigates and addresses the over-enforcement as it arises, using the same consistent approach applied across all workflows.
Within the Global Response organization, teams of regional experts are routinely monitoring trends and events, including during certain awareness-raising periods, to help mitigate harm and over-enforcement on our platforms. In addition to monitoring global events, these teams are skilled in identifying potential systemic gaps in our enforcement and applying context-specific policies accordingly. Should these teams identify local or regional events such as “National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (NEDAW)” in the United States, these experts often take steps to monitor the performance of our reviewers in the region to identify potential gaps or risks of over-enforcement—partnering with Content Policy and other Global Operations teams to identify appropriate solutions. Upon sharing the above details on specific measures we take to prevent overenforcement during awareness-raising periods, we now consider this recommendation complete and will have no further updates.