Cyberbullying has become the biggest issue of the current time, as trolling in the comment section of various social media platforms has hurt many people mentally, especially the teens. To overcome this issue, Instagram has announced a new feature for the platform, through which the users will be able to flag the hate comments on their posts. Though Instagram already has set a proper guideline for the users to follow and has got a filtering feature that screens the hate comments, it is quite time-consuming.
“We can do more to prevent bullying from happening on Instagram, and we can do more to empower the targets of bullying to stand up for themselves. Today we’re announcing one new feature in both areas. These tools are grounded in a deep understanding of how people bully each other and how they respond to bullying on Instagram, but they’re only two steps on a longer path.” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri through a post.
The company has made the use of artificial intelligence for implementing the new feature, such that whenever anyone will try to post a comment, if the system finds it offensive, a question will pop up on their screen asking, “Are you sure you want to post this?”, along with an undo button, to change their action.
Though people will still be able to post the comment, according to Mosseri, the feature will produce high possibilities for the commenter to rethink about posting the comment.
Another feature, that the company is working on, is the ability of a user to restrict the other users’ interaction with the former’s account. This feature will help Instagram users, who are reluctant to blocking or unfollowing an account that is constantly cyberbullying them. If one user has restricted a specific account, the comments posted by that account will only be visible to the commenter, unless the former approves it for the other users. This way, the account owner can shadowban the users, who use hate speech, without them knowing about it. The banned user will also be restricted from seeing if the owner of the account has read their DM or is active at the moment.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.