Conformity of Eating Disorders through Content Moderation

For individuals with mental illness, social media are considered spaces for sharing and connection. However, not all expressions of mental illness are treated equally on these platforms. Different aggregates of human and technical control are used to report and ban content, accounts, and communities. Through two years of digital ethnography, including interviews with people with eating disorders, we examine the experience of content moderation. Our analysis shows that the practices of moderation available on different platforms have particular consequences for members of marginalized groups, who are pressured to conform and compelled to resist, such as through the subversion of platform features and collective action. Above all, we argue that platform moderation is enmeshed with wider processes of conformity to mental illness and body image. Practices of moderation reassert certain bodies and experiences as 'normal' and valued, while rejecting others. At the same time, practices of navigation around and resistance to these normative pressures further inscribe individuals as on the margins. We discuss changes to the ways that platforms handle content related to eating disorders by drawing on the concept of multiplicity to inform design.

CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI).