Instagram Hardens Stand Against Spam & Offensive Comments

The likes and comments on our Instagram pictures are always a treat.Offensive comments are a nuisance. Haters take pride in trolling with paid trolling being a career option today. Bots post irrelevant, soulless, generic compliments and annoy us.

Social media platforms connect us with friends, family members, and relatives. However, cyberbullying and online trolling has caused frustration among social media users, driving many to suicide.

According to media reports and some studies, cyberbullying is common on social media websites including Facebook and Instagram and some websites often encourage cyberbullying so that bullies spend long hours on their websites.

What is Instagram doing to counter the spam and cyber bullying?

Instagram (owned by Facebook) is taking steps to prevent hateful comments and various kinds of behavior related bullying. Instagram is planning to introduce an update that would block offensive comments by default. It remains to be seen whether this can actually happen or is it just a theory.

Nicky Jackson Colaco, Instagram’s head of public policy, said:

“Rather than implement a blanket ban on certain words, we gave users the chance to moderate their comment experience.”

Users can still report individual comments and profiles. Instagram hopes to create a safer and a more inclusive space for all users via its automatic blocking feature.

The new update also aims to address spam. We all see robot-generated spam comments or some thumbs-up emoji appearing as a random comment on any post. Reports say that the new filter will work in many different languages and will also use machine learning to improve over time.

The phenomenon of learning applies to offensive comments as well. The more dirty and toxic comments the filter sees and identifies, the more it would learn and the smarter it would get. This filter will be an artificial intelligence in its own right.

Users can manually customize the new filter by adding words they choose to exclude. Hence, this enhances the degree at which, they can ban spammers, trolls and other nefarious figures from posting offensive comments or sending annoying messages on personal accounts.

Many celebrities have already started using the new filter. Instagram says the filter will soon be made available to all users in some form.
What are your thoughts on Instagram‘s upcoming update? Post your comments.

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