Instagram has taken many initiatives to manage bullying on their platform. Apart from having many Instagram likes and millions of Instagram followers, you can still face different types of negative comments and acts on your accounts. The most visited platform considers the user’s privacy as its priority.
It has been proved by the Pew Research Center that 59% of teenagers in America have been bullied or harassed. In Britain 42% of youngsters of 12 to 20 years have been cyberbullied on Instagram. Furthermore, it has been declared that bullying is expected to rise in the upcoming years.
Types of Bullying
For scanning the bullying content there are three types of content classifier on Instagram such as one is trained for analyze text, second is for photos such as nude or sex photo and third one is for video scanner. They are always active and live in action for giving flags to the wrong content on Instagram.
There are different forms of bullying on Instagram such as mean comments, insults, threats are some old fashioned and these are easy to catch by the Instagram bullying text classifier. They are well trained enough to look for the different strings which look suspicious. Photo sharing is one of the common bullying among teens and it was found in great numbers on Instagram as compared to Facebook as mostly people used their real name in Instagram.
Instagram Anti-Bullying Features
Following are some of the features of Instagram that works to prevent the Instagram users from bullying.
Control Tags
Instagram has features that facilitate you in choosing who can tag you or who can’t in their comment, caption, or story. You can select options according to your will such as ‘’everyone’’, only people you follow or ‘’no one’’ option.
Indicate Warning
Instagram recently introduced this new warning feature which shows the warning reminder for those who want to give any offensive comment on another profile. They remind them of guidelines and tell them if they do this, they will remove or hide their comment. They give them a chance before posting a comment by asking this question: are they sure about their post? The warning sign gives them a chance to undo the message before it is posted.
Sending Report
The user is given the option of sending a report of person to the Instagram community guidelines. The team acts on receiving the report and people don’t get any notification when you send a report.
Block
You can also block people who irritate you on and off in different ways. In this way, they can’t see your profile, posts, and stories on Instagram. Those whom you block are not notified and thus you can also block new account holders as well.
Customized Word List
Most of the time there are such words or comments that don’t mismatch our community guidelines. You can make your own customized word list to prevent yourself from inappropriate words or sentences.
Set your Limits.
You can prevent yourself from unwanted interaction from the people by hiding comments and messages from those who don’t follow you or they are your new follower. The Instagram safety tool is anti-bullying which keeps you safe from the people’s negative acts and responses.
Restrict
This is another new feature in Instagram which will help you in dealing with targeted bullying or harassment. Restrict is not blocking or doing nothing as it lies in between these two actions. When you restrict any negative comments, it only shows you and the sender. The sender of the comment doesn’t know that either its message is screened or also not receive any read receipt from your side. The sender even doesn’t know when you are online and view their messages. Upon restriction of the account, you can make comments only visible to everyone upon your approval.
Remove Heap of Negative Comments
Another new feature of Instagram is managing the bulk of negative comments for those people who have an account with many fans following. These types of account holders on Instagram can’t manage negative comments on their posts which get viral. So, by using this feature you can delete the bulk of comments from multiple accounts. This feature has proven helpful for those who have high profile accounts such as business owners or celebrities. You can do this on iOS by:
- Tap on that comment.
- click on the dotted icon present at the top right corner.
- Select manage comments.
- Select 25 comments which you want to delete at once.
- On further clicking on more options, there is a feature which lets you block or restrict the accounts of all the commenters in great amounts.
- If you are android users, then you have to press and hold the comment and then click on the dotted icon to select block or restrict.
Conclusion
If someone wants to bully an account, it will do it on any account at any cost. That is why Instagram has several features which protect their users from it. They also introduced some of the new features as well which act as anti-bullying. The bullying is of various types and most prevalent among teenagers. So, it is necessary to eradicate this problem from its roots to make social media safe and secure.