Meta establishes Thrive to address suicide and self-harm content

Delhi: Meta revealed in its blog post that it has worked with the Mental Health Coalition to establish Thrive, a new program that allows tech companies to share signals about violating suicide or self-harm content and stop it spreading across different platforms. 

Meta is providing the technical infrastructure behind Thrive, which allows signals to be shared securely. 

Alongside Meta, Thrive’s founding members include Snap and TikTok. 

Antigone Davis, Head of Global Safety at Meta, said, “At Meta, we’ve worked with experts for years – including our suicide and self-harm advisory group and members of Meta’s own safety teams – to develop an informed and thoughtful approach to suicide and self harm content shared on our apps. Yet, like many other types of potentially problematic content, suicide and self-harm content is not limited to any one platform. To be truly effective in responding to this content, tech companies need to work together.”

Through Thrive, participating tech companies will be able to share signals about violating suicide or self-harm content so that other companies can investigate and take action if the same or similar content is being shared on their platforms. 

Meta is providing the technical infrastructure that underpins Thrive – the same technology they provide to the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program – which enables signals to be shared securely. 

Participating companies will start by sharing hashes – numerical codes that correspond to violating content – of images and videos showing graphic suicide and self-harm, and of content depicting or encouraging viral suicide or self-harm challenges. 

Meta said, “We’re prioritising this content because of its propensity to spread across different platforms quickly. These initial signals represent content only, and will not include identifiable information about any accounts or individuals.”

Thrive builds on the work already done at Meta to remove harmful content that shows graphic imagery or encourages suicide or self-harm, while still giving space for people to talk about their own experiences. 

Meta added that they also provide support to those sharing and searching for content related to suicide or self-harm by connecting them to local organizations around the world, including Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and Crisis Text Line in the US.