We care deeply about the safety of the people who use our apps. We regularly consult with experts in suicide, self-injury and eating disorders to help inform our policies and enforcement, and we work with organizations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress.
While we do not allow people to intentionally or unintentionally celebrate or promote suicide, self-injury or eating disorders, we do allow people to discuss these topics because we want our services to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another. We may also limit the ability to view this content to adults aged 18 and older.
We remove any content that encourages suicide, self-injury or eating disorders, including fictional content such as memes or illustrations, and any self-injury content which is graphic, regardless of context. We remove content that contains instructions for extreme weight loss behaviour. We also remove content that mocks victims or survivors of suicide, self-injury or eating disorders, as well as real time depictions of suicide or self-injury. Content about recovery from suicide, self-injury or eating disorders that is allowed, but may contain imagery that could be upsetting (such as a healed scar) is placed behind a sensitivity screen and we will also limit the ability to view the content to adults aged 18 and older.
When people post or search for suicide, self-injury or eating disorders related content, we will direct them to local organizations that can provide support and if our Community Operations team is concerned about immediate harm we will contact local emergency services to get them help. For more information, visit the
Meta Safety Center.
With respect to live content, experts have told us that if someone is saying they intend to attempt suicide on a livestream, we should leave the content up for as long as possible because the longer someone is talking to a camera, the more opportunity there is for a friend or family member to call emergency services.However, to minimize the risk of others being negatively impacted by viewing this content, we will stop the livestream at the point at which the threat turns into an attempt. As mentioned above, in any case, we will contact emergency services if we identify someone is at immediate risk of harming themselves.