San Francisco (SunstarTV Bureau): Instagram on Wednesday has announced to disable of the account holders who repeatedly send malicious messages in private chats to others on its platform.
The initiative has taken by the platform after reported racist online abuse targeted at footballers in the United Kingdom (UK).
“Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account. We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” Instagram said in a statement.
“People can also choose to turn off tags or mentions from anyone they don’t know or block anyone who sends them unwanted messages,” it informed.
“We don’t want this behavior on Instagram”.
Since DMs are for private conversations, Instagram does not use technology to proactively detect content like hate speech or bullying the same way it does in other places.
Reportedly, in between July and September of last year, the company took action on 6.5 million pieces of hate speech on Instagram, including in DMs.
“We’re also committed to cooperation with UK law enforcement authorities on hate speech and will respond to valid legal requests for information in these cases”, said Instagram.
Notably, in year 2020, the company announced a new feature to manage multiple unwanted comments in one go whether that’s bulk deleting them, or blocking the accounts that posted them.
