top of page
Facebook (Meta)

Facebook (Meta)

Suicide and self-injury

Self-Harm, Suicide, Self-Injury

Policy Date:

Apr 14, 2022

We care deeply about the safety of the people who use our apps. We regularly consult with experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement, and work with organisations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress.

While we don't allow people to intentionally or unintentionally celebrate or promote suicide or self-injury, we do allow people to discuss these topics because we want Facebook to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues and seek support from one another.

We define self-injury as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. We remove any content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including fictional content such as memes or illustrations and any self-injury content that is graphic, regardless of context. We also remove content that identifies and negatively targets victims or survivors of suicide or self-injury seriously, humorously or rhetorically, as well as real-time depictions of suicide or self-injury. Content about recovery of suicide or self-harm that is allowed, but may contain imagery that could be upsetting, such as a healed scar, is placed behind a sensitivity screen.

When people post or search for suicide or self-injury- related content, we will direct them to local organisations that can provide support and if someone is at immediate risk of harming themselves, we will contact local emergency services to get them help.

With respect to live content, experts have told us that if someone is saying they intend to attempt suicide on a live-stream, we should leave the content up for as long as possible, because the longer someone is talking to a camera, the more opportunity there is for a friend or family member to call emergency services.

However, to minimise the risk of others being negatively affected by viewing this content, we will stop the live-stream at the point at which the threat turns into an attempt. As mentioned above, in any case, we will contact the emergency services if we identify that someone is at immediate risk of harming themselves.

Do not post:
Content that promotes, encourages, coordinates or provides instructions for
Suicide.
Self-injury.
Eating disorders.
Content that depicts graphic self-injury imagery

It is against our policies to post content depicting a person who engaged in a suicide attempt or death by suicide

Content that focuses on depiction of ribs, collar bones, thigh gaps, hips, concave stomach or protruding spine or scapula when shared together with terms associated with eating disorders

Content that contains instructions for drastic and unhealthy weight loss when shared together with terms associated with eating disorders.

Content that mocks victims or survivors of suicide, self-injury or eating disorders who are either publicly known or implied to have experienced suicide or self-injury

For the following content, we restrict content to adults over the age of 18, and include a sensitivity screen so that people are aware that the content may be upsetting:
Photos or videos depicting a person's death by suicide or suicide attempt, which are determined to be newsworthy.
Photos or videos depicting a person who engaged in euthanasia/assisted suicide in a medical setting.
For the following content, we include a sensitivity screen so that people are aware that the content may be upsetting to some:
Content that depicts older instances of self-harm such as healed cuts or other non-graphic self-injury imagery in a context of recovery.
Content that depicts ribs, collar bones, thigh gaps, hips, concave stomach or protruding spine or scapula in a recovery context.
We provide resources to people who post written or verbal admissions of engagement in self-injury, including:
Suicide.
Euthanasia/assisted suicide.
Self-harm.
Eating disorders.
For the following Community Standards, we require additional information and/or context to enforce:
We may remove suicide notes when we have confirmation of a suicide or suicide attempt. We try to identify suicide notes using several factors, including but not limited to, family or legal representative requests, media reports, law enforcement reports or other third party sources (e.g. government agencies, NGOs).
A suicide note may also be removed when reported through the Suicidal content contact form or Instagram contact form when we have confirmation of a suicide or suicide attempt

bottom of page