Instagram Cracks Down on Abuse With New Safety Features After Incident Involving Premier League Star

Ivan Toney of Brentford was contacted by Instagram's parent firm Meta to schedule a briefing on their safety features after the Premier League striker experienced racial abuse. Days after a Premier League footballer disclosed he was subjected to racial harassment on the platform, Instagram has unveiled a new safety feature that would enable famous people to avoid abuse. "I wasn't even going to publish this but I woke up outraged," the 26-year-old wrote on Twitter, along with screenshots of the abuse and the perpetrator's account. In the wake of the event, Instagram's parent company Meta claimed to have gotten in touch with Toney to provide support and set up an overview of their security measures. A notice encouraging users to exercise consideration before commenting on a post and an expansion of the Hidden Words tool for users with Creator accounts are among the new safety features that were revealed on Thursday. Multiple accounts owned by the same individual can also be blocked. The app's Hidden Words feature, which was added last year, automatically censors hazardous content from requests for messages and comments. Instagram will now automatically enable the tool for Creator accounts. When the feature is expanded to include story answers, rude comments from accounts the user does not follow will be routed to a Hidden Requests folder. Additionally, filtering technologies will be enhanced to recognize and conceal more objectionable terms that are deliberately misspelled, such as when a "I" is substituted for a "1." Users who respond to inappropriate comments on the network will also receive notifications, which will deter them from starting further contentious debates. In a blog post on the changes, the social media behemoth promised to "continue working on further methods to safeguard people from abuse on Instagram while fostering supportive and respectful conversations." According to the business, the nudging feature is already available for users whose apps are set to English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese, or Arabic. It will be made available worldwide in the upcoming weeks. This reminder that a real person is on the other end of a DM request fosters more polite outreach to people they might not know, according to Instagram.