Instagram are to introduce a new feature to help reduce the amount of negative and abusive comments received by users on the site.
The site had been accused of not dealing with racist abuse aimed at England footballers.
Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka all received racial abuse following England’s defeat to Italy in that final.
Liam Gallagher and others also voiced their support for the footballers. More on that here.
“research”
Users of the site will also be allowed to hide comments.
They can also hide private message requests from people that do not follow them. They can also hide requests from people who have only followed them recently.
“Our research shows that a lot of negativity towards public figures comes from people who don’t actually follow them”, said the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri.
Mosseri also said this comes from people who “have only recently followed them, and who simply pile on in the moment”.
Mr Mosseri also said that an increase in popularity coincided with an increase in abusive comments.
He pointed to the abuse received by the three English players as an example. The comments they received also remained visible for days.
Mr Mosseri also said that the site had “mistakenly” marked content as benign after some users had reported abuse.
They would get a message saying that the content “probably” did not breach guidelines.
Second Instagram feature
Instagram added another safety feature. This allows users to hide private message requests if the contain an emoji, word or phrase deemed to be offensive.
This feature had been launched in a handful of places in April. It will be available globally by the end of August.
Instagram have also promised to strengthen the wording of their prompt. This prompt was seen by users who try to post something deemed as offensive by the site.
Adam Mosseri also said, “We’ve found these warnings really discourage people from posting something hurtful”.
