Most people know by now the harmful effects of conversion therapy, and the people who work at Instagram are very aware which is why they announced that the website and app will be banning all posts that promote the faux practice, according to Business Insider.
Conversion therapy is contingent upon people believing that being LGBT is a mental illness that should be cured which is not only objectively incorrect, but horribly insulting to millions of people across the globe, so it is only natural that Instagram would decide to ban posts that promote the practice. Earlier this year, Instagram decided to ban any advertisements that promoted conversion therapy and as of today, July 10, they went further and decided to ban any posts that promotes it.
Tara Hopkins, Instagram’s public policy director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, made a statement announcing the ban, saying “We don’t allow attacks against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity and are updating our policies to ban the promotion of conversion therapy services.” Pro-conversion therapy posts are most assuredly attacks on people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity in my opinion, so I definitely agree with this decision.
The ban will come into effect as of today, but it will take some time for Instagram to update its policies and because of that, some pro-conversion therapy posts won’t immediately be removed. The decision followed a recent UK campaign that would get the government to ban the practice like they promised in 2018.
Obviously I agree with this ban (considering I stated that explicitly in this article) and my hope is that more companies and more places will speak out against conversion therapy, but what do you think? Going by Tara Hopkin’s assessment of such posts, they are against Instagram’s community guidelines that state “It’s never OK to encourage violence or attack anyone based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, disabilities, or diseases” so it’s only fair that they would ban such posts.
Source: Business Insider