Given this is blowing up in the UK press right now on a particularly sensitive subject matter for IG (teenage girls and mental health), IG product and comms wants to be able to say we will 'suspend' any facial distortion beautification Spark AR/VR effects allowed by our current policy 'upon escalation' as we are undertaking our PPF review process. This means the 3rd party filters would be put back in a pending approval state in the Spark platform until the recommended policy changes are reviewed and passed by PPF next month. Given the scrutiny of these 3rd party filters so close to a time we are confident we are going to change the policy, I feel it's not unreasonable — I certainly don't think we can defend them. That said, it would be suspending an approved filter under current policy which is not a precedent I feel great about.

My understanding is product has a meeting later today to align on removing all face-distorting effects from the gallery while we wait for the PPF recommendation on beautification filters — I would be strongly supportive of the pause on approving beautification effects into the Spark AR platform while that review is underway. We are in a very bad place attempting to defend this, especially for young teenage girls who are the primary audience of these filters.