Instagram, just like other social networks, grapple with abuse on their network where trolls freely comment on your post to the point where it becomes cyber-bullying. This sort of behaviour is detrimental to a social network’s experience to a user and may lead to the person quiting it which is a scenario a social network would want to avoid. This is why they usually provide tools to the user for moderating comments on their posts and Instagram is doing just that.
According to The Washington Post, Instagram will soon allow its users to filter the stream of comments they receive on their posts. They are doing this like what we see on blogs and on YouTube where they can filter comments or turn off comments. You will apparently be allowed to switch off comments on a “post to post” basis. “Our goal is to make Instagram friendly fun and most importantly, safe place for self expression,” Instagram’s head of public policy gave a statement to the publication. Apparently the company has been testing the feature on “prominent accounts” ahead of its release which is understandable since their posts usually generate a huge stream of comments.
This is actually a great idea to curtail trolls in your Instagram posts and it is good the company decided to emulate the effective use of comment moderation from what we have seen from blogs and YouTube channels. Twitter could learn from Instagram about implementing a feature like this since it is usually plagued by online harassment claims but since it is structured differently unlike other comment friendly networks, this might be a challenge.
