Instagram, the photo-sharing startup recently purchased by Facebook, has made a new addition to its community guidelines. In an effort to support a "positive and healthy community," Instagram will now ban content that promotes "self harm" such as eating disorders, cutting, suicide, or other such actions.

"While Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographs, any account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning," states the new addition.

Instagram also notes that the new guidelines do not apply to accounts created to talk about recovery or to seek help, but to those feeds that promote and encourage such harmful behavior, portraying it in a positive fashion. "We believe that communication regarding these behaviors in order to create awareness, come together for support and to facilitate recovery is important, but that Instagram is not the place for active promotion or glorification of self-harm," Instagram wrote.

Instagram Asks Users to Help Police Content

Instagram users who find content supporting self-harm in images, hashtags, or through the name or subject of the account, are asked to flag photographs or users for "Terms of Service violations," thus helping Instagram police its content. Instagram is banning related hashtags within its search function, such as "thinspiration," "proanorexia," and "probulimia," in an effort to make it harder for users to actively share such content.

Furthermore, content that is related to self-harm, but not necessarily promoting it, will now appear with a disclaimer. Prior to viewing the actual image, users will have to click or tap through the disclaimer, which will inform them that what they are about to view "may contain graphic content." One of two promoted URLs will be displayed beneath the text, directing users to other sites that offer support.

For images related to suicide or self harm, the disclaimer will direct users to befrienders.org for more information and support. For images related to eating disorders, Instagram will direct users to nationaleatingdisorders.org.

"These notices will provide those searching for, or navigating to, these hashtag pages resources in order to seek help, as well as the ability to choose to either view or navigate away from the associated content," Instagram explained in its post.

One wonders whether the new policy decision could have been prompted by the recent controversy surrounding MTV model/host Alexa Chung's photo, which was posted on Instagram. Chung's image was removed from Instagram after it attracted a series of harsh comments about how scrawny Chung's legs were. The comments were so harsh that it prompted Chung to make her account private.

(reported by Alexandra Burlacu, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)