New Instagram Feature Allows Users to Moderate Comments with Keyword Filters

The latest feature that Instagram is rolling out allows everyone to moderate and filter certain words on the photo-sharing platform. Earlier this summer, Instagram launched a similar feature for business accounts and other high-profile users to block abusive language from their comments and create keyword blacklists.

Instagram has a default keyword blacklist of abusive terms and epithets that anyone with an account can now activate when they select the “hide inappropriate comments” option via the gear icon. In addition, you can take policing your own account a step further by customizing your own personalized blacklist of words that you don’t want to see. This option allows people to filter out topics they find uncomfortable or do not wish to discuss, even if they are not technically abusive. This feature can generally help users maintain a sense of decorum and civility on their comment feeds. According to Techcrunch, Taylor Swift was reportedly an early tester and user of the feature prior to launching.

Other filtering tools that Instagram leaves at your disposal are the ability to block user accounts, report inappropriate comments, and deleting comments. Another change that Instagram is rolling out is algorithmic ranking that prioritizes comments based on relevance.

Managing trolling, bullying and other forms of abusive online behavior has become an urgent priority for social networks, who risk losing celebrity accounts and other users if they do not do so successfully. Instagram has been relatively fortunate in this regard, as it’s suffered far fewer bullying incidents than other social platforms, such as Twitter.

Will you be using the moderation feature on Instagram?