Instagram ban on hallucinogen ayahuasca overturned by Meta board

Instagram reversed its decision to remove a post about ayahuasca.

The Oversight Board of parent Meta called for Instagram to allow for “positive discussion of religious or traditional uses of non-medical drugs.” (REUTERS)

Instagram reversed its decision to remove a post about ayahuasca, a plant-based psychoactive brew used in spiritual ceremonies by indigenous groups in South America, after the Oversight Board of parent Meta called for the social platform to allow for “positive discussion of religious or traditional uses of non-medical drugs.”

In its ruling published Thursday, the Oversight Board also said the company formerly known as Facebook needed to change its rules on regulated goods to better “respect diverse traditional and religious practices” on some non-medical drugs. 

“Meta's rationale does not appear to have taken into account controlled uses of ayahuasca which aim to mitigate health risk,” the Board said.

A spiritual school based in Brazil had appealed to the Oversight Board after Instagram removed one of its posts showing a picture of a dark brown liquid in a jar and two bottles with accompanying Portuguese text saying that ayahuasca was for those who want to “break free.”

The July post had been viewed over 15,500 times with no users reporting the content. However, it was removed by one of Meta's content moderators after being flagged by the company's automated systems. 

Between July and September, the Oversight Board saw some 339,000 requests from Facebook and Instagram users around the world appealing the company's decisions, a 64% rise from the previous quarter. The Board overturned four out of six decisions it published in the third quarter.

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Instagram says it's bringing back chronological feed

(ANI) Instagram head Adam Mosseri, during a hearing before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, said that the company is working on a version of its feed that would show users' posts in chronological order, unlike its current ranking algorithm that sorts posts based on user preferences.

As per the Verge, the company's algorithmically sorted feed, introduced in 2016, and then updated in 2017 to include recommended posts, is widely disliked by users who prefer to have their posts and their friends' posts surface in a timely manner.

The current feed uses AI to create what Instagram considers a more personalised feed, based on users' activity. But it has remained generally unpopular among a vast swath of users, despite the company's assertions otherwise.

According to The Verge, Mosseri appeared before the Senate subcommittee where he was grilled by senators about child safety issues on the app.

On Tuesday, Instagram rolled out the "Take a Break" feature it started testing last month to users in the US and other English-speaking countries. The opt-in feature prompts users to pause using the app after they've been using it for a certain time period. More parental controls over their teenagers' use of Instagram will be released next year, Mosseri said