On its 10th anniversary, Instagram is rolling out a bunch of visual features including allowing you to change the app icon. With that, the company is also introducing some measures to reduce abusive comments on the platform.
The first feature is automatically blocking offensive comments using AI. The company said that it’ll detect these by using previously reported offensive comments. You can tap on “View Hidden Comments” to see them. The social network will automatically remove all comments that violate its community guidelines. This feature is currently in a beta mode.
In addition to this, the company is expanding its “nudge” feature that notifies someone when they’re posting a nasty comment. Earlier, it used to prompt the offensive poster only once. Now, the app will show also warnings when someone repeatedly tries to post insulting stuff.
Instagram didn’t expand on any numbers, but it said that since rolling out the nudge feature last year, it has seen “a meaningful decrease in negative interactions” in the comments section.
The new tools will be available globally when people are writing comments in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic (Android only) to start. Instagram said it’ll expand these features to other languages in the future.
Published October 6, 2020 — 13:02 UTC