In a move to curb bullying and hate speech, Instagram will soon allow its 500 million active users to disable comments for any photos that they post on the app, remove followers, and anonymously report people who say they plan to hurt themselves.
In the next few weeks, all Instagram users will get the ability to turn off comments for specific posts. The option to do so will be in the app's "Advanced Settings" menu, and if you activate it before you post, you can reenable comments at any time. Instagram said it had previously been testing the feature with a select number of users.
In addition to blocking comments, those with private Instagram accounts will now be able to revoke permission for others to follow them. Owners of private accounts must approve all follower requests, although there previously was no way to revoke someone's ability to see posts from a private account once their request was approved, short of blocking them. The new ability to remove followers is akin to Facebook's "unfriending" feature—the person won't receive notice that they no longer follow you.
Instagram is also adding the ability to report people whose posts indicate that they may hurt themselves. The company says it has a team who will monitor these reports 24 hours a day.
Instagram's new safety tools come as social networks have been under increasing pressure to police the content their users upload. Facebook, which owns Instagram, yesterday announced a partnership with Twitter, Microsoft, and Google to share extremist content removed from any one platform with all of the others to better combat its spread.
Meanwhile, the European Union criticized all four companies this week for not doing enough to remove offensive and hateful online comments from their networks. A European Justice Commission study found that the removal rate of racist posts in Germany and France was above 50 percent, but just 11 percent in Austria and 4 percent in Italy.