Instagram wants to protect the world’s wildlife from an existential threat: selfies.
Facebook’s photo-sharing app on Tuesday began singling out hashtags like #SlothSelfie and #koalaSelfie, alerting users with pop-up messages that exotic animals appearing in tourist photo-ops are often subjected to abuse.
Sloth selfies on Instagram — typically brokered by locals in tourist traps like Costa Rica — exploded by nearly 300 percent this year since 2014, according to World Animal Protection.
Investigators found that the famously cute, lackadaisical creatures were being illegally captured in the rain forests and held captive in villages where tourists would flock for pictures.
Fiercer beasts such as tigers and lions often are de-clawed and have their teeth removed or dulled to make them less of a threat to Instagram-happy tourists, says Crawford Allan of the World Wildlife Fund. They are also sometimes drugged to make them more docile.
In many cases, people do not realize that they are interacting with animals that are being mistreated, Allan said.
“They can be kept in poor conditions by people who are just trying to make a buck,” Allan said. “They are very costly to keep safe and to feed, and they end up being disposed of — sometimes being killed for their body parts.”
From now on, Instagram searches for hashtags like #TigerSelfie will get a pop-up warning that the keywords “may be associated with posts that encourage harmful behavior to animals or the environment,” Instagram said in a blog post.
The warnings will appear on hundreds of searches, though Instagram has not released a detailed list, looking to prevent malicious actors from sidestepping them.
In addition to English, the notifications will also be available in the languages of the countries where wildlife tourism is most popular, such as Thailand and Indonesia.