Instagram Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Systrom has announced that the application will be upgrading its offensive comment filter today, expanding it to automatically filter out bullying comments.
Comments containing attacks on a person’s appearance or character, as well as threats to a person’s well-being or health will be amongst those targeted.
“Starting today, Instagram will filter bullying comments intended to harass or upset people in the Instagram community, said Kevin Systrom.
“To be clear: we don’t tolerate bullying on Instagram. Our Community Guidelines have always prohibited bullying on our platform, and I’m proud to announce this next step in our ongoing commitment to keeping Instagram an inclusive, supportive place for all voices.”
Users will also be able to disable the filter if they’d like to see the unedited comments on their feeds as well, but it will be enabled by default.
Instagram will also be expanding their policies to guard against bullying young public figures on the platform.
“Protecting our youngest community members is crucial to helping them feel comfortable to express who they are and what they care about,” said the statement.
For now, the new anti-bullying filter is only launching for English-language comments, but Instagram plans to offer it in other languages in the future, too.
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