Nowadays, it isn’t just Facebook or Twitter that has to deal with trolls, offensive and inappropriate comments, and other cases of cyberbullying. Even a seemingly innocuous photo sharing network like Instagram now has to take steps to ensure that its users have a safe space to express their creativity and share their life to the whole world. CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom himself made the announcement that one of the first steps they’re doing is to add a new keyword moderation tool for comments on your account.
You will now be able to filter out comments on your posts that you find offensive or inappropriate or hurtful. You simply go to the gear icon on your profile and you’ll be able to list down the words that you want to block. So if any of these words are used to comment on a picture that you posted, Instagram will automatically hide it. It won’t be deleted, but you won’t be able to see it anymore. They provide you with a list of default words but you can also create your own list in case they’re not enough.
Instagram has previously introduced some features to help users manage the comments on their feed. You could swipe to delete a comment, block accounts that you think are harassing you, and report inappropriate comments to Instagram. And since Systrom mentioned in his announcement that the comment tool is just the first feature they’re introducing, so this means we can expect more tools later on.
The comment filtering will be applied to previous and new comments on your posts. But since they’re not really deleted, if you turn off the tool, all the filtered comments will be restored on your feed.
SOURCE: Instagram
