Instagram has announced that it’s going to remove beauty filters – however the damage is finished

Meta has announced Starting in January 2025, third-party augmented reality (AR) filters will now not be available within the apps. This means greater than two million User-created filters offered on WhatsApp, Facebook and particularly Instagram will disappear.

Filters have grow to be an integral a part of Instagram, with probably the most viral of those – which frequently involve enhancing the user’s appearance – being shared by users themselves via the Meta Spark Studio.

But the usage of beautifying AR filters has long been related to Deterioration of mental health and problems with body image in young women.

In theory, the removal of the overwhelming majority of Instagram filters should mark a turning point for unrealistic beauty ideals. However, the removal comes far too late and can only drive the usage of filters underground.

Much just like the recent proclamation of stripling Instagram accounts, withdrawing and changing technologies years after encouraging their use is little greater than a stopgap measure.

Filters are popular – so why remove them?

Meta rarely volunteers details about technologies and business practices beyond what is completely needed. This case is not any different. Meta has previously shown that it isn’t motivated by harm to users, even when its own leaked internal investigations show The use of Instagram and filters contributes to poorer mental health amongst young women.

So why wait until now to phase out a preferred (but controversial) technology?

Officially, Metastates The company intends to “prioritize investments in other corporate priorities.”

Most likely, AR filters are one other victim of the boom in artificial intelligence (AI). In April, Meta promised to 35-40 billion US dollars in technology and develops AR technology in-house.

Filters is not going to disappear entirely on Instagram. First-party filters created by Meta will still be available. The range of filters on the official Instagram account (currently 140) is insignificant in comparison with the library of hundreds of thousands of filters created by third parties.

Instagram's official filters also offer less diverse AR experiences, and the account doesn’t have any beautifying filters.

The end of beauty filters? Not quite

Meta removed filters in 2019, but Prohibition only applied to “surgery” filters and was reversed for Mark Zuckerberg's request after a fleeting implementation.

Informally named for his or her ability to mimic the consequences of cosmetic surgery, surgical filters are the hottest type the Instagram filter.

They are also probably the most controversial because users want surgery and “Optimizations” to mimic their filtered image. In my research, I discovered that when analyzing the design of beautifying Instagram filters, 87% of the filters tested made the user’s nose smaller and 90% made the user’s lips larger.

With the removal of third-party filters, a majority of these sophisticated and realistic beautification filters will disappear from meta platforms.

However, that is hardly a reason to have a good time. Analysis of media coverage After the primary filter ban, we found that users were upset concerning the removal of the operational filters and still looked for methods to access them.

Now that users have had access to AR filters on Instagram for seven years, they’re much more accustomed to their presence. They even have many more alternatives to access a version of the technology inside one other app. This is concerning for several reasons.

Watermarks and photo skills

When you post with a filter on Instagram, a watermark will appear on the image that references the filter and its creator.

This watermark is very important to assist users determine whether an individual's appearance has been altered or not. Some users bypass the watermark by downloading and re-uploading their filtered photo, making their filtered appearance harder to detect.

By removing popular beauty filters from Instagram, this “covert” practice will grow to be the default way for users to post with these filters on the platform.

Forcing users to make use of filters covertly further complicates the already delicate issue of visual literacy.

Young women and girls feel inadequate in comparison with edited and filtered images on the Internet (including their very own).

Some newer TikTok filters, just like the viral “Bold glamour“ filters use AI technology (AI-AR) that mixes the user’s face with the sweetness filter trained on a database of “ideal” images.

In contrast, traditional AR filters overlay a hard and fast design (just like a mask) and warp the user's facial expression accordingly. The results of these recent AI AR filters is a hyper-realistic, yet completely unattainable standard of beauty.

Removing beauty filters on Instagram won't end their use. Instead, users will move to other platforms to access filters. As with Bold Glamour, these filters might be more sophisticated and harder to detect when reposted across platforms without the good thing about the watermark indicator.

Only 34% of Australian adults are confident of their Media literacy. Those with less developed digital visual skills it’s becoming increasingly difficult to inform the difference between edited and unedited images. Add to this the rapid rise of generative AI images, and we’re in unprecedented territory.

While removing the beautification filters can have made sense at a more essential time, the genie is now out of the bottle. By now removing its already extremely popular beautification filters (and the watermark that comes with them), Instagram won't make the issues related to filter use on Instagram go away, they'll just grow to be tougher to administer.