Instagram is introducing several new settings this week to give users more control over how the public interacts with their accounts. These features are intended to slow the spread of hate on the platform, which all too often slips through the cracks in its moderation systems.
The new feature on Instagram allows users to limit unwanted comments and messages from users, giving them more power to choose who they want to interact with. This feature was introduced to fight abuse and harassment on social media platforms. The feature, named ‘Limits,’ is in its early testing phase and is available only for specific users. It is an extension of the Instagram feature that allows users to migrate and ban, abuse, and harassing comments.
The most notable new feature, called “Limits,” allows users to quickly draw a hard line around commenting on posts and sending them direct messages. The Limit, along with a few other new places, puts hate control in the hands of individual users – a trend that, perhaps not ideal, but has enormous potential to impact the Instagram experience positively.
Setting Your Own Limits
Available this week to consumers worldwide, Limits is a set of new toggles that allow you to choose who can comment on your posts and send you DMs. Most consumers who experience spikes in hate derive hatred from accounts they haven’t followed for a very long time (if at all).
The limit feature can be accessed as a new section on the Privacy Settings page of the Instagram app. Users can choose who to block messages from: accounts they don’t follow, recent followers, or both. There’s also an option to have Instagram remind you to turn off-limits after a certain amount of time (once the worst of the hate has passed).
More anti-abuse filters, Too
Instagram is also expanding its more automated anti-abuse filtering system. There’s already an automatic alert that appears to users when they’re about to post a potentially hateful comment, but Instagram is now making the first alert more robust. The company says that this alert actually works about 50 percent, prompting users to delete or edit their comments.
The company recently confirmed testing a new anti-harassment tool, Limits, which Instagram chief Adam Mosseri mentioned in a video update shared with the Instagram community last month. The feature aims to give Instagram users an easy way to temporarily lock their accounts if they are targeted with a stream of harassment.
Such addition could have helped counter the recent racist attacks on Instagram following the final of Euro 2020, which saw the vicious harassment of several English footballers by angry fans following the team’s defeat. The incidents, which had included racist comments and emojis, raised awareness of how little Instagram users could do to protect themselves when they’ve gone viral in a negative way.
After a successful trial, Instagram is also opening up its “Hidden Words” feature to all global users this week. Hidden Words automatically filters out the DM requests containing offensive words, phrases, and emoji, moving them to a new hidden folder in the user’s inbox.
These updates provide some significant protections for Instagram users; they approach hate from various angles in the hopes of stomping most of it out before it even reaches you. It is significant coming from a company that, in the past, has profited off hate.