Instagram launches DM filters to reduce visibility of abusive content and hate speech

The tool will work similarly to comment filters where users can personalise and custom hide abusive comments and phrases which they don’t want to see. The abusive text in DMs will be covered so users will not have to see it but users can choose to uncover it.

Instagram is rolling out filters for direct messages (DM)s that will let users persoanlise their DMs by choosing to hide certain abusive words. Instagram will then hide these messages from users’ DMs. Instagram notes that it aims to reduce racist, sexist, homophobic, and other kind of abuse that users with particularly a large number of followers face. Users can access this tool by going to Privacy Settings > Hidden words. “But combatting abuse is a complex challenge and there isn’t one single step we can take to eliminate it completely. For example, we know that many in our community, particularly people with larger followings, have faced abuse in their DM request inbox from people they don’t follow,” Instagram in a blog post noted.