Status: 07/01/2022 5:12 p.m
Many photos in advertising and social media have been edited afterwards – and are putting young people under pressure, say the federal states’ ministers for equal opportunities. They therefore demand that such images be marked.
The Equal Opportunities Ministers of the federal states want a labeling obligation for beautified pictures in social networks. “The beauty filters used in social media and in advertising demonstrably shape an unrealistic ideal of beauty for girls and women, because it is simply no longer recognizable which photos are edited and which are not,” said Hamburg’s Equal Opportunities Senator Katharina Fegebank after the conference Ministers for Equal Opportunities in Hamburg.
Labeling obligation from 10,000 followers
“We shouldn’t let digital tools dictate what is beautiful and what isn’t,” Fegebank said. Therefore, the federal government was asked by a large majority to introduce legal regulations for the labeling of retouched advertising images and the use of beauty filters.
The regulation should apply to all commercially active persons as well as to influencers with a large reach. “They assume around 10,000 followers,” said Fegebank. The new regulation is intended to affect videos or photos in which the face, body, skin or hair have been changed with image processing and which are to be shown on social networks or made accessible for advertising purposes.