Instagram introduces new features to fight abuse in DM and comment section

The new features include:

• The ability for people to limit comments and DM requests during spikes of increased attention;
• Stronger warnings when people try to post potentially offensive comments;
• The global rollout of our Hidden Words feature, which allows people to filter abusive DM requests.

Suppressing Offensive DMs

Instagram has launched a feature to help protect people when they experience or anticipate a rush of abusive comments and DMs. Instagram has introduced Limits: a feature that once turned on, it will automatically hide comments and DM requests from people who don’t follow you, or who only recently followed you.

According to Instagram, this new feature helps creators and public figures when they experience sudden spikes of comments and DM requests from people they don’t know. 

Instagram introduced the feature as their research showed that a lot of negativity towards public figures comes from people who don’t actually follow them, or who have only recently followed them. 

Limits allows users to find a mid-way from to hear from your long-standing followers, while limiting contact from people who might only be coming to your account to target you.

Limits is available to everyone on Instagram globally. In order to access it go to privacy settings to turn it on, or off. 

Suppressing Offensive Comments

Currently, users are showed a warning when someone tries to post a potentially offensive comment. And if they try to post potentially offensive comments multiple times, Instagram shows an even stronger warning. Now, rather than waiting for the second or third comment, Instagram will show this stronger message the first time.

Hidden Words

To help protect people from abuse in their DM requests, Instagram recently announced Hidden Words, which allows the user to automatically filter offensive words, phrases and emojis into a Hidden Folder, that they never have to open if they don’t want to. 

It also filters DM requests that are likely to be spammy or low-quality. Earlier, this feature was launched in ahandful of countries. Now, the feature will be available globally by the end of this month.