BRITISH MPs yesterday grilled Instagram bosses, who expressed heartbreak and promised to relook the app’s policies following the suicide of a Sarawak teenager recently, BBC News reported.

The MPs questioned the social media company’s executives as part of an inquiry into “immersive and addictive technologies”.

Instagram’s head of product Vishal Shah called the 16-year-old’s death “very shocking and deeply saddening”, the report read.

“We are constantly looking at our policies.

“And if, in cases like the polling sticker, we are finding more evidence where it is not matching the expectations… we are looking to see whether we need to make some of those policy changes,” Vishal was quoted as saying.

The British MPs are holding the inquiry under Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

The Sarawak teenager was found dead on Monday night about five hours after running a poll on her Instagram account on whether she should live or die, which saw 69% of her followers choosing death.

She had apparently jumped from the top floor of a three-storey shoplot in Bandar Baru Batu Kawa.

The poll was conducted using a feature on the social media app that allows users to ask a question using a “sticker” placed over a photo. Viewers can tap on one of two answers for the app to tally the votes.

Instagram’s head of public policy, Karina Newton, told the British MPs that such a poll went against the company’s guidelines.

The app has ways to “detect ‘self-harm thoughts’” and will remove certain posts, the BBC said. If it detects self-harm words like “suicide”, services offering counselling and help will appear as pop-ups.

The parliamentary committee also asked the Instagram executives if the company could suspend or cancel the accounts of those who egged the girl on to commit suicide.

Newton responded that the company was still in the process of identifying the content violations. – May 17, 2019.