Instagram won't say why teen's dead body still shows up in profile pics despite image-blocking tech

Instagram is taking steps to block users from posting horrific photos of a teen's body after her brutal murder, but the platform's filters seem to have blind spots: profile pictures and videos.

Days after heavy backlash for not taking down gruesome photos of Bianca Devins' body quickly enough, Instagram still struggles to get a handle on content moderation. The upsetting situation is another example of social media companies being ill-prepared to keep up with widespread platform abuse.

Known on Instagram as @escty, Devins was a 17-year-old e-girl who was popular on 4chan and ran a server on Discord with people she had met through the anonymous site. She was murdered on Sunday morning. Photos of her dead body have been heartlessly posted and reposted on social media after her alleged murderer Brandon Andrew Clark, who she'd met online, shared them on his Instagram story and Discord moments after slitting her throat. 

Instagram users have tried to mitigate the photo's spread by flooding Devins' tagged photos with wholesome images of sunsets and stuffed animals, burying the photo so it's harder to find. In addition, Instagram is using "image hashing" technology that identifies posts visually similar to the photo Clark, 21, posted and automatically removes it from the platform. 

SEE ALSO: Instagram can't stop flood of grisly photos from teen's murder so users step up

But it's clear the software doesn't catch everything — accounts manage to get around Instagram's screens by using the photo as a profile picture and in videos, as well as other ways. On Wednesday morning, Mashable found an account using the photo of Devins' body that claimed it was also selling t-shirts printed with the photo. It wasn't until hours later, after Mashable flagged the profile for Instagram, that it was removed. Instagram wouldn't say why its image-blocking wasn't working automatically across-the-board, especially with this gruesome profile photo.

In a statement, Instagram said: "In addition to technology we have in place to proactively find images of this tragic event, we urge the Instagram community to report violating accounts and content to us so we can take swift action." 

A Facebook spokesperson also said in an email to Mashable that the platform is disabling many of the anonymous accounts that were set up with the express intent to share photos of Devins' death, and that policy extends to those accounts using the image as a profile photo. 

That doesn't necessarily prevent people from making new accounts and doing it all over again, though. Or those people figuring out ways to bypass Instagram's hashing technology. 

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