Melbourne, Meta has announced that third-party augmented reality (AR) filters will no longer be available in its apps from January 2025. This means that more than two million user-created filters offered on WhatsApp, Facebook and , most notably, Instagram will disappear. .
Filters have become a fundamental feature of Instagram. The most viral ones, which often involve beautifying the user's appearance, are created by users themselves through Meta Spark Studio.
But the use of beautifying AR filters has long been linked to worsening mental health and body image issues in young women. In theory, removing the vast majority of Instagram filters should mark a turning point. turning to unrealistic beauty standards. However, the removal comes too late and the move is more likely to drive filter use underground.
Like the teen accounts recently announced for Instagram, backtracking and altering technologies years after their use has been encouraged offers little more than a Band-Aid approach.
Filters are popular, so why remove them? Meta rarely offers information about technologies and business practices beyond what is absolutely necessary. This case is no different. Meta has previously shown that it is not motivated by user harm, even as its own leaked internal research indicates that Instagram use and filters contribute to poorer mental health in young women.
So why wait until now to kill off a popular (but controversial) technology?
Officially, Meta states that it intends to "prioritize investments in other company priorities." AR filters are most likely yet another casualty of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). In April, Meta pledged to invest between $35 billion and $40 billion in the technology and is implementing AR technology internally.
Filters will not disappear completely on Instagram. Your own filters created by Meta will still be available. The supply of filters available on the official Instagram account (currently 140) pales in comparison to the library of millions of filters created by third parties.
Instagram's official filters also offer less diverse types of AR experiences, and its account does not include any beautifying filters. The end of beauty filters? Not quite
Meta removed filters once before in 2019, although the ban only applied to "surgery" filters and was revoked at Mark Zuckerburg's request after a fleeting implementation.
Surgery filters, informally called for their ability to mimic the effects of cosmetic surgery, are the most popular type of Instagram filter. They are also the most controversial, with users seeking surgery and “touch-ups” to mimic their filtered image. . In my research, I found that when analyzing the design of Instagram's beautifying filters, 87% of the sampled filters shrank the user's nose and 90% enlarged the user's lips.
Removing third-party filters will cause these types of sophisticated and realistic beautifying filters to disappear from meta-platforms.
However, this is no cause for celebration. Analyzing media coverage of the first filter ban, we found that users were upset with the removal of surgical filters and intended to find ways to access them anyway. Now, after having access to AR filters in Instagram for seven years, users are even more accustomed to its presence. They also have many more alternatives to access a version of the technology within another application. This is worrying for several reasons.
Watermarks and photographic literacy.
When posting with a filter on Instagram, a watermark appears on the image linking the filter and its creator. This watermark is important in helping users determine whether or not someone's appearance has been altered. Some users avoid the watermark by downloading their leaked photo and uploading it again to make their leaked appearance harder to detect.
By removing popular beauty filters from Instagram, this "undercover" practice will become the default way for users to post with these filters on the platform.
Forcing users to use covert filters adds another thorn in the already thorny case of visual literacy. Young women and girls feel inadequate compared to edited and leaked images online (including their own).
Some newer TikTok filters, like the viral “Bold Glamor” filter, use artificial intelligence (AI-AR) technology that fuses the user's face with the beauty filter, trained on a database of “ideal” images.
In contrast, standard AR filters overlay a scenic design (similar to a mask) and contort the user's features to match. The result of these new AI-AR filters is a hyper-realistic and yet totally unattainable standard of beauty. Removing beauty filters on Instagram will not prevent their use. Instead, it will take users to other platforms to access the filters. Like Bold Glamour, these filters will be more sophisticated and harder to detect when republished on multiple platforms, without the benefit of having the watermark indicator.
Only 34% of Australian adults feel confident in their media literacy skills. Those with less developed digital visual literacy are finding it increasingly difficult to determine the difference between edited and unedited images. Add to this the rapid rise of generative AI imaging, and we are entering unprecedented territory.
While the removal of beautifying filters at a more crucial time may have been significant, the genie is out of the bottle. By Instagram removing its already very popular beautification filters (and the accompanying watermark), the problems associated with using filters on Instagram will not go away, but will simply become more difficult to manage. (The conversation) AMS
Filters have become a fundamental feature of Instagram. The most viral ones, which often involve beautifying the user's appearance, are created by users themselves through Meta Spark Studio.
But the use of beautifying AR filters has long been linked to worsening mental health and body image issues in young women. In theory, removing the vast majority of Instagram filters should mark a turning point. turning to unrealistic beauty standards. However, the removal comes too late and the move is more likely to drive filter use underground.
Like the teen accounts recently announced for Instagram, backtracking and altering technologies years after their use has been encouraged offers little more than a Band-Aid approach.
Filters are popular, so why remove them? Meta rarely offers information about technologies and business practices beyond what is absolutely necessary. This case is no different. Meta has previously shown that it is not motivated by user harm, even as its own leaked internal research indicates that Instagram use and filters contribute to poorer mental health in young women.
So why wait until now to kill off a popular (but controversial) technology?
Officially, Meta states that it intends to "prioritize investments in other company priorities." AR filters are most likely yet another casualty of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). In April, Meta pledged to invest between $35 billion and $40 billion in the technology and is implementing AR technology internally.
Filters will not disappear completely on Instagram. Your own filters created by Meta will still be available. The supply of filters available on the official Instagram account (currently 140) pales in comparison to the library of millions of filters created by third parties.
Instagram's official filters also offer less diverse types of AR experiences, and its account does not include any beautifying filters. The end of beauty filters? Not quite
Meta removed filters once before in 2019, although the ban only applied to "surgery" filters and was revoked at Mark Zuckerburg's request after a fleeting implementation.
Surgery filters, informally called for their ability to mimic the effects of cosmetic surgery, are the most popular type of Instagram filter. They are also the most controversial, with users seeking surgery and “touch-ups” to mimic their filtered image. . In my research, I found that when analyzing the design of Instagram's beautifying filters, 87% of the sampled filters shrank the user's nose and 90% enlarged the user's lips.
Removing third-party filters will cause these types of sophisticated and realistic beautifying filters to disappear from meta-platforms.
However, this is no cause for celebration. Analyzing media coverage of the first filter ban, we found that users were upset with the removal of surgical filters and intended to find ways to access them anyway. Now, after having access to AR filters in Instagram for seven years, users are even more accustomed to its presence. They also have many more alternatives to access a version of the technology within another application. This is worrying for several reasons.
Watermarks and photographic literacy.
When posting with a filter on Instagram, a watermark appears on the image linking the filter and its creator. This watermark is important in helping users determine whether or not someone's appearance has been altered. Some users avoid the watermark by downloading their leaked photo and uploading it again to make their leaked appearance harder to detect.
By removing popular beauty filters from Instagram, this "undercover" practice will become the default way for users to post with these filters on the platform.
Forcing users to use covert filters adds another thorn in the already thorny case of visual literacy. Young women and girls feel inadequate compared to edited and leaked images online (including their own).
Some newer TikTok filters, like the viral “Bold Glamor” filter, use artificial intelligence (AI-AR) technology that fuses the user's face with the beauty filter, trained on a database of “ideal” images.
In contrast, standard AR filters overlay a scenic design (similar to a mask) and contort the user's features to match. The result of these new AI-AR filters is a hyper-realistic and yet totally unattainable standard of beauty. Removing beauty filters on Instagram will not prevent their use. Instead, it will take users to other platforms to access the filters. Like Bold Glamour, these filters will be more sophisticated and harder to detect when republished on multiple platforms, without the benefit of having the watermark indicator.
Only 34% of Australian adults feel confident in their media literacy skills. Those with less developed digital visual literacy are finding it increasingly difficult to determine the difference between edited and unedited images. Add to this the rapid rise of generative AI imaging, and we are entering unprecedented territory.
While the removal of beautifying filters at a more crucial time may have been significant, the genie is out of the bottle. By Instagram removing its already very popular beautification filters (and the accompanying watermark), the problems associated with using filters on Instagram will not go away, but will simply become more difficult to manage. (The conversation) AMS
