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It seems like Instagram has taken online bullying very seriously. To prevent online bullying, Instagram now allows users to restrict or 'shadow ban' accounts that indulge in bullying.
What is Shadow ban?
The term ‘Shadowban’ has been around from 2006, but now it has become mainstream. Shadow ban means restricting or blocking a user from the online community in a way that they don’t realize that they have been banned.
A few years ago twitter introduced the temporary ‘time-out’ concept in which it blocked users with abusive tweets or those breaking their terms of services. Twitter would then inform the users that they have been shadowbanned.
Instagram Shadow ban
Many cases of abusive comments and online bullying are seen these days. Instagram has announced this unique feature, to prevent online bullying.
This feature will allow users to restrict any account. If the restricted account goes on to post any comment even after that, it will not be visible to anyone apart from them. It also hides the user’s activity status from the restricted account and even hides whether they have or have not read their direct message.
Users can make the restricted person’s comment visible to others by approving that comment. Instagram does not notify the user that they have been shadow banned.
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Instagram is also using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect bullying and other types of harmful content in the form of comments, videos, and photos.
Instagram has also started rolling a new feature which is powered by AI that notifies the user when their comment is being offensive. This feature helps a user undo their command, which prevents recipients from getting harmful comments.
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"We've heard from young people in our community that they're reluctant to block, unfollow, or report their bully because it could escalate the situation, especially if they interact with their bully in real life," Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram wrote in a blog post on Monday.
"We can do more to prevent bullying from happening on Instagram, and we can do more to empower the targets of bullying to stand up for themselves," he further wrote.