Instagram Announces Upgrades to Protect Users From Abuse, Inappropriate Content

Instagram will enhance features that help users block the accounts of abusers and trolls on the social media platform, the Meta Platforms-owned company said on Thursday.

All the Instagram users will now be able to block all existing accounts of a person, expanding a feature launched last year that only allowed the blocking of any new accounts that they may create.

"Based on initial test results from this new change, we expect our community will need to block 4 million fewer accounts every week, since these accounts will now be blocked automatically," Instagram said in a blog post.

The photo-sharing app has been doubling down on tackling hate speech and online abuse on its platform, which is more popular among teens and young adults than Meta's Facebook.

Instagram has also upgraded its feature that helps prevent users from viewing possibly abusive messages, by filtering offensive words to Stories replies, and said on Thursday it is expanding "nudges" designed to protect creators from harassment.

As elaborated by the social media company in its blog post, it updated the features to let users block on Instagram. Through the feature, a user has the ability to block multiple accounts created by a particular person. This also blocks existing accounts that person may already have.

The company also added an update to Hidden Words, launch last year, by letting users cover Stories replies which are offensive in nature. Moreover, inappropriate replies from people who you do not follow will be automatically sent to the Hidden Requests folder. 

Moreover, the support for Hidden Words has now extended to several other new languages, including Farsi, Russian, Turkish, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil. 

In addition to these, Instagram will also display a community guideline request when a user will try to send a message to a creator. This practice is aimed at removing the usage of offensive words.