Beiruting News

Instagram and Facebook will ban any content that promotes conversion therapy, the social media platforms said on Friday, after activists called on it to block providers from advertising their services online.

Facebook said it would expand its existing policies on hate speech worldwide to include posts that advertise or promote the practice, in a move that applies to both platforms.Conversion therapy, a pseudo-scientific process that professes to change a person's sexuality, is widely discredited and condemned as harmful by major medical associations , including in the United States and the United Kingdom.The decisions follow appeals from users to remove an Instagram account used by Core Issues Trust, a UK-based promoter of conversion therapy."We don't allow attacks against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity and are updating our policies to ban the promotion of conversion therapy services," Tara Hopkins, Instagram's public policy director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said in a statement.