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Lauren A. Miller, PhD Student in AR filters and digital beauty cultures on social media, Swinburne University of Technology

Instagram has announced it will be removing beauty filters – but the damage is done

Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Meta has announced third-party augmented reality (AR) filters will no longer be available on its apps as of January 2025. This means more than two million user-made filters offered across WhatsApp, Facebook and, most notably, Instagram will disappear.

Filters have become a mainstay feature on Instagram. The most viral of these – which often involve beautifying the user’s appearance – are created by users themselves via the Meta Spark Studio.

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