Meta has announced the launch of Thrive, a new signal-sharing program designed to combat suicide and self-harm content across online platforms. The initiative, developed in collaboration with the Mental Health Coalition, is an initiative aimed at curbing the spread of harmful content online.
This program, created in partnership with the Mental Health Coalition, allows tech companies like Meta, Snap, and TikTok to share information about harmful content with each other. This way, if one platform finds content that violates their rules, they can notify other platforms so they can also take action.
Thrive aims to make it harder for graphic and harmful content to spread across different websites and apps. Meta is providing the technology that makes this secure sharing possible. They will start by sharing numerical codes, called hashes, that identify harmful images and videos without revealing any personal information about users.
Thrive is part of Meta’s ongoing efforts to manage and remove harmful content while still allowing people to talk about their experiences in a safe way. Between April and June this year, Meta took action on over 12 million pieces of harmful content on Facebook and Instagram. Meta is also making it harder for such content to be found in searches and ensuring it is hidden from teenagers, even if shared by people they follow.
“Thrive builds on the work we already do 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. We 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,” Meta wrote in a blog post.
