For some time now, numerous studies have confirmed how harmful social media can be to the mental health of young people. Meta, Snap, and TikTok, the main pillars of online communication today, have launched a new program, Thrive, which would serve to stop the spread of content that promotes suicide or self-harm.
It was created in collaboration with the Mental Health Coalition. The charity’s main objective is to eliminate the social stigmas that mental health problems still carry today.
Meta is the technical responsible for making Thrive work. It is built on the same technical infrastructure that powers Lantern, a program designed to combat child abuse online.
How does it work exactly? It uses a signal exchange system based on hashes (numeric codes) to detect any type of graphic content that may violate the policies of Meta networks (Instagram or Facebook, for example), Snapchat, and TikTok. According to Meta, these signals “only represent content and will not include identifiable information about any account or individual.”
