Instagram has announced a range of new tools it says will help protect users and combat incidents of discrimination and abuse from unwanted accounts.
The issues were highlighted over the last few months as tirades of racist language were aimed at Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Simone Biles among other athletes.
The biggest new feature to help with this is Limits.
Limits will give people the ability to automatically hide comments and direct message requests from other users who they do not already follow, or have only recently followed them.
The firm said it had been designed to stop waves of abuse from accounts who "pile on in the moment".
The service, which is owned by Facebook has also improved in-app alerts it shows to those who try posting abuse.
From the new update, they will be warning users they could potentially have their account removed if they continue to send abusive comments. It is also introducing its Hidden Words filter tool, meaning people can filter out words, phrases and emojis they don’t want to see.
The purpose of the tools is to give people more control while ensuring they feel safe when using the site.
The Limits feature will be rolled out to all Instagram users globally starting on Wednesday and will enable people to decide for how long they would like to hide comments and message requests from non-followers and those who only started following them in the last week.
The tool could also be expanded in the future to automatically prompt users to turn on Limits when the platform detects a user may be experiencing a spike in comments and direct messages.
Writing in a blog post announcing the new features, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said: “We don’t allow hate speech or bullying on Instagram, and we remove it whenever we find it.
"We hope these new features will better protect people from seeing abusive content, whether it’s racist, sexist, homophobic or any other type of abuse."
.jpg?w=600)
