The Way Influencers Use Filters On Instagram Is About To Change In A BIG Way

Make-up artistSasha Louise Pallari gained notoriety last year by speaking out on Instagram and creating the hashtag #filterdrop. What is #filterdrop about? It's a move to re-balance the use and effects of filters, face-altering apps and Photoshop on social media, especially when it comes to ads and promotions from influencers. This year Sasha has taken things a big step further. After shedding a light on the misuse of filters on social media Sasha took her manifesto to the Advertising Standard's Authority (ASA) with a view to effecting change.

'I first contacted the ASA back in August,' says Sasha, 'and since then it's been six months worth of back and forth emails. I sent them lots of examples of how filters can amplify the benefits of beauty products on social media, and sent pictures of myself using different filters to illustrate my point further. As a result the ASA have finally advised that influencers, brands and celebrities should not be using filters on social media when promoting beauty products if the filter is likely to exaggerate the effect that the products are capable of achieving. Those with large followings online stand to gain a lot from promoting products on social media and there's nothing wrong with that, but let's do it transparently.' Sasha is overwhelmed at such a positive result. 'I can't explain how it feels, this sort of result was unimaginable at the time. It goes to show how much we can do as individuals.'

In 2020 Sasha encouraged Instagram users to post a picture of themselves without any editing and include the hashtag #filterdrop. Cue a wave of realistic and honest content that, on occasion, stood in direct juxtaposition to so many of the overly polished images that, for many people, dominated the Instagram ether. 'My passion was always make-up and now it's about empowering people to recognise who they are as opposed to what they look like,' Sasha tells Grazia, 'it has never felt natural to me to use filters. With me, what you see is what you get.'

How Is The Way Influencers Use Filters On Instagram Going To Change?

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) now advises brands, influencers and celebrities alike not to apply filters to photos which promote beauty products if such filters are likely to exaggerate the effect the product is capable of achieving, even if the name of the filter is referenced in the Instagram story.

What Will Happen If Influencers Continue To Post Beauty Ads And Promotions Using Filters?

In 2021 so far the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned two Instagram stories from one influencer and one Instagram story from another, in both cases because the respective influencer applied a filter which misleadingly exaggerated the effect that the product being advertised was capable of achieving.

How #FilterDrop Came To Be

'#filterdrop was an accident,' explains Sasha, 'one evening I watched the Instagram stories of an influencer I follow. I really enjoyed following her and I still do. She posted a series of brand specific make-up tutorials. She’d originally marked the posts as an ad, implying they were paid for (it turned out later they weren't). She’d used a filter to brighten everything up, to make her teeth brighter and her eyes whiter, that sort of thing. I put a couple of stories up myself asking how this is allowed to happen? She has over 300k followers and she was falsely advertising these products. It was impossible to see them at work because of the filter. I got such a big response from those stories. I had curated a following of like-minded people who wanted to see realness. I said to my followers "Ok let’s do something about this, let’s create this hashtag and if you fancy putting up a picture without a filter make sure to include it." It just spiralled from there.'

There Is A Time And A Place For Filters

Sasha is quick to dispel the notion that we should ditch filters full stop. 'Editing and filtering encompasses such an array of different things,' Sasha clarifies. 'If you’re posting about your weekend in the sun, a walk in the park, a shopping haul - filters are fine, you’re not harming anyone by using them. When it comes to selling products and selling cosmetics with a filter on though, there’s nothing right about it. The filter stops viewers from being able to see what that product really does.'

'Take Instagram stories, for example. The "Paris swipe" is the most dangerous filter of them all. If the person using it is wearing a lot of make-up or demonstrating skincare it’s almost impossible to tell what’s what. There's nothing wrong with editing or using filters for aesthetic reasons - it’s really lovely to see an Instagram account with a whole theme or colour code for example. When I talk about #filterdrop I'm focusing on encouraging people who are selling or making money through collaborations with make-up or skincare brands through Instagram and social media, to do so truthfully and transparently.'

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On The Filter Effect

'Filters are addictive,' says Sasha. 'We can sometimes get so used to seeing ourselves through them that that we don't appreciate what we see in the mirror or through a filter-free lens and that's the real problem. In an ideal world I'd like to see all face-altering filters scrapped but it's unlikely that that will ever happen. In the meantime I think greater transparency is key. Greater transparency will help people good in their own skin.'

Let's Start Feeling Good In Our Own Skin

Sasha has a few words of advice for us all when it comes to feeling great in our own skin. 'The first thing, the most important thing, is to work on who you are as a person – that has the potential to be far more beautiful than what we look like. Work on being kind, work on being compassionate, work on learning and educating yourself. Work on all of those things that can’t be seen with the eye. Try not to compare yourself to others, too. Whoever you want to look like, they tend to want to look like someone else. It’s a cycle of wasted energy. Practice every single day. None of us were born confident, we learned our confidence and it got knocked out of us via every day life, through unrealistic beauty standards, through things we’ve seen on the TV, filters, editing, we don’t even know what has damaged us but that’s the reality of it. Practice unlearning all of those things. It gets out of hand if you don’t address the reason why you can’t leave the house without make-up or don’t love your skin, and so on.' Words to live by.

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