Instagram helps users to restrict unnecessary comments and new controls for limiting ‘sensitive’ content in the Explore tab
San Francisco, NFAPost: As part of its strategy content moderation, Instagram has come up with new Community Guidelines which include features to restrict comment, and sensitive content control.
In a blogpost, Instagram stated that the company believes people should be able to shape Instagram into the experience that they want.
We’ve started to move in this direction with tools like the ability to turn off comments or Restrict someone from interacting with you on Instagram. Also, launching what we call “Sensitive Content Control,” which allows you to decide how much sensitive content shows up in Explore,” states Instagram.
Instagram is giving its users a tiny bit more power to see what they want — and not see what they don’t want — in its content discovery hub. The company introduced a new toggle called “Sensitive Content Control” that allows anyone to screen posts that it thinks could be offensive, hiding them from the Explore tab.
The new feature appears in the settings menu and lets users choose to either allow more content that could be “upsetting or offensive,” limit that content or “limit even more.” The phrasing is kind of weird but it acknowledges that the company’s moderation efforts aren’t perfect, and that’s realistic at least.
“You can think of sensitive content as posts that don’t necessarily break our rules, but could potentially be upsetting to some people – such as posts that may be sexually suggestive or violent,” Instagram explained in the announcement.
On Instagram, “sensitive” content is a massive catch-all category for stuff it allows but doesn’t want to be seen as directly promoting. In its own guidelines on content it recommends, Instagram states that sexually suggestive content like “pictures of people in see-through clothing” aren’t eligible for the Explore tab. Instagram’s definition of sensitive content also includes dangerous forms of content like “exaggerated health claims” and posts promoting weight loss supplements.
Instagram is notorious for over-policing content that the platform deems to be sexual. A campaign from Black plus-size model Nyome Nicholas-Williams successfully pressured the platform into relaxing one of its overly restrictive nudity rules last year.
To view your Sensitive Content Control, go to your profile, tap the Settings menu in the upper right corner, tap Account, then tap Sensitive Content Control. Here you can decide whether to keep the setting at its default state (“Limit”) or to see more (“Allow”) or less of some types of sensitive content (“Limit Even More”). You can change your selection at any time. One exception to this: the “Allow” option will not be available to people under 18.
Instagram contextualized the new content controls as part of a new effort to give users more power to determine what shows up in their feed.
While the company is giving users more control over its algorithm in some small ways, it’s also considering giving them less. Last month, Instagram began testing algorithmic suggestions mixed into the main feed, a design choice that would let the company inject the platform with even more of what it wants you to see.
