Following Instagram’s recent update on their work to combat abuse and hate speech, they have now announced a new way to protect people from seeing abusive DM’s coupled with the ability to prevent someone you have blocked from contacting you via a new account.
Say Hello to a New Feature that Filters Abusive Messages
There is no denying it – abusive content has a hugely negative impact; one which nobody should have to experience, and Instagram understands just that.
Users will now have the ability to ‘Hide message requests’, along with comments within their ‘Hide Offensive Content’ options. This means that when activated, any offensive DM’s will be added to the ‘Hidden Requests’ folder in their message inbox.
According to Instagram: “This new feature is designed to help protect you from potentially offensive or abusive DM requests, while also respecting your privacy. All message filtering will take place on your own device, which means this feature won’t send any message content back to our servers.”
The Ability to Preemptively Block
Instagram has also made it harder for users you have blocked to contact you again. This feature will give you the option of blocking both a person’s account and preemptively block new accounts that person may create.
Given the platform’s turbulent past, these additions are extremely valuable in the quest of decreasing harassment and providing additional protection to its users.
