Hate speech and targeted online abuse is a well known problem that users face on nearly every social media platform. As a solution, these social media companies provide tools to the user that can help curb these negative actions. Doing to their part, Instagram has announced that they are working on improving their detection and providing more tools to their users to report and block unwanted speech.
Direct Messages is an area where Instagram knows there is a lot of hate speech and abuse. However, due to its private nature, Instagram has a limited set of tools. Even so, they are improving upon their existing protection.
For example, if an account continues to send messages repeatedly that violate their guidelines, Instagram can disable the account entirely. It will also disable new accounts that were designed specifically to get around these messaging restrictions.
Personal accounts will now have the option to switch off DMs from accounts they do not follow, which was a feature that was previously only available to business and creator accounts. People can also switch off certain tags of their choosing and block mentions from people they don’t follow.
For the future, Instagram is working on tools that will help users block these negative, abusive DM before they even see it. The developers of Instagram hope to launch this feature in the coming months and will take community feedback on how to improve it.