Instagram Announces New Safety Tools for Creators
Social media app Instagram announced Wednesday new safety tools aimed at protecting creators from unwanted interactions.
The new tools will roll out over the next few weeks, according to Instagram, and will focus on proactive fixes. This means using the investments the social media company said it’s made to improve detection of possible spam across comments, tags, story views, and even fake followers. The automated detection would help creators moderate fake followers and spam in bulk, according to a release from Instagram.
“We know that, as a creator, engaging with your community energizes and motivates you, but having to spend time deleting spammy comments from your posts or removing fake accounts from your followers can be a drag — and more time spent moderating your account means less time interacting with your fans,” the release reads.
In practice, users can see a new tab labeled as “Potential spam.” From here, they can bulk delete follow requests, accept or delete them individually, or let them get deleted after 30 days. These accounts won’t get an alert that they’ve been removed from the follower list either. Additionally, existing followers flagged as possible bots or spam accounts will also get filtered into a separate inbox.
As for tags, posts that are detected as possible spam won’t actually be able to tag accounts until that user approves them. Bulk deletion is available here as well along with auto deletion after 30 days.
Instagram already hides comments that might be offensive or constitute as spam, but the company says it will filter more spam with its “Advanced Comment Filtering.” Plus, creators can already check out the Hidden Words tool to hide offensive message requests or comments.
Possible bots and spam artists won’t even appear as views on Stories, which Instagram says is in an effort to further limit interaction with these accounts.
Conversely, creators can now see if their activity is coming across as spam, whether intentionally or not. Creators will be notified in-app if their content is potentially policy violating or non-recommendable, meaning the app wouldn’t show it to other non-followers. Creators can then look at the offending content and make changes or remove it.
Harassment and spam have been a longstanding issues across social media platforms. Hopefully, the changes will be able to make an impact. That said, spam filtering hasn’t always gone accordingly plan. Notably, in 2020, numerous Black Lives Matter posts were wrongly blocked due to Instagram’s anti-spam filter.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
