Instagram Comment Moderation Tool Now Available to All Users

Instagram has announced that its comment moderation tool will now be available to all users. This has has been available to high-volume accounts for a while, and after the announcement, will now be rolled out to all globally. The reason for the staged delivery of this feature was to garner feedback in the shortest duration.

"The first feature we’re introducing is a keyword moderation tool that anyone can use. Now, when you tap the gear icon on your profile, you’ll find a new Comments tool. This feature lets you list words you consider offensive or inappropriate. Comments with these words will be hidden from your posts. You can choose your own list of words or use default words we’ve provided. This is in addition to the tools we’ve already developed such as swiping to delete comments, reporting inappropriate comments and blocking accounts," wrote Instagram CEO and Co-founder Kevin Systrom.

“Our goal is to make Instagram a friendly, fun and, most importantly, safe place for self expression," said Instagram's head of public policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco, in a statement to The Washington Post earlier. "We have slowly begun to offer accounts with high volume comment threads the option to moderate their comment experience. As we learn, we look forward to improving the comment experience for our broader community.”

What this means is users can create their own lists of words that ensures specific comments do not appear on their images, allowing complete control of their comments streams or if they choose, to turn off comments altogether. Also, comments containing certain words in Instagram’s database will be hidden and not show up on a user’s picture.

While Instagram has policies to define what is acceptable speech on the platform, different words and phrases may be offensive to different people. Allowing users to indulge in their own brand of censorship as they see fit does seem like one way to avoid potential conflicts and to sidestep any complaints of harassment.

For a platform that’s been veering towards being more advertiser-friendly, it does seem like logical progression. More so when you consider that the comments sections tend to be areas of abuse on the Internet.

This follows Instagram’s decision to remove its Photo Map feature, citing that it was not being used by many users.