As Instagram updates its hate speech policy, the social media App is tightening its rules towards blocking accounts that spread hate speech repeatedly. Instagram will now start disabling accounts that use DM to send hateful and abusive messages continually.
Instagram currently prohibits these accounts from sending abusive DMs for a certain period of time but as per the new policy, if someone repeatedly sends abusive and hateful messages, their account will get deactivated.
“Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account. We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our Messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” Instagram said in a statement.
The company conveyed that it has started rolling out more controls to the private accounts all over the world and plans to expand the rollout to more countries soon. “People can also choose to turn off tags or mentions from anyone they don’t know or block anyone who sends them unwanted messages,” it informed.
The new updates were announced in the light of the incident where the company saw racist online abuse targeted at footballers in the UK. “We’re also committed to cooperation with UK law enforcement authorities on hate speech and will respond to valid legal requests for information in these cases”, said Instagram.
Instagram said it took action on 6.5 million hate speech, including direct messages during July and September of last year.