Users say harmful content from accounts they do not follow appears even after requests to block it
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The Observer has uncovered seven further groups, with a combined total of almost 200,000 members, openly sharing content that promotes eating disorders. All of the groups were created after Twitter was bought by the billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.
Eating-disorder campaigners said the scale of harmful content demonstrates serious failings in moderation by X. Wera Hobhouse MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders, said: “These findings are most concerning … X should be held accountable for allowing this harmful content to be promoted on its platform, which puts many lives at risk.”
The internet has long been a breeding ground for content that promotes eating disorders – sometimes called “pro-ana” – from message boards to early social media sites including Tumblr and Pinterest. Both sites banned posts promoting eating disorders and self-harm in 2012 after an outcry over their proliferation.
Debbie said she remembers the pro-ana internet message boards, “but you’d have to search to find them”, she said.
This kind of content is now more accessible than ever and, critics of social media companies argue, is pushed to users by algorithms, which serve people more – and sometimes increasingly extreme – posts.
Eating disorders are a good example of how online spaces can spread mental illness like a virus. Individuals with ED’s often have this insatiable urge to post ED propaganda online, much like rabies makes it’s victims have the urge to bite people. It is how the virus perpetuates itself.
Sometimes ED will arrive organically in an individual without digital exposure to it, but some people only acquire it because they literally fell down an online rabbit hole. Very similar to MAGA in terms of being a digital mind-virus