Cyberbullying has become one of the most argued issues in today’s world. Social media gives users the freedom to share any content with anyone through their platform. As a result, offensive comments and direct messages over the internet increase in social media among billions of users. To deal with such backlashing concerns, Instagram has come up with a new DM filter feature in their app.

Instagram stated, “We’ve worked with leading anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organizations to develop a predefined list of offensive terms that will be filtered from DM requests when the feature is turned on. All DM requests that contain these offensive words, phrases, or emojis will be automatically filtered into a separate hidden requests folder.”

Instagram users will now have a new preference setting in their ‘Hide Offensive Content’ options that allows users to filter DMs that might contain certain abusive words, phrases, and emojis, as defined by Instagram. As Instagram mentioned, the primary purpose of this initiative is to reduce racist, sexism, homophobia, and another kind of abuse that most public figures and users with a large number of unknown followers face.

This new feature offers several options to avoid unwanted contacts and harmful content through DMs. It functions similarly as hiding comments that disables comments from followers that contain terms the user doesn’t want to see. The DM filter comprises a predefined list of offensive words possibly used in DMs and hides messages with such words.

It also enables users to create their own customized set of words, phrases, or emojis that they want to hide in DMs. Such DMs will get filtered in a hidden requests section that users can separately access with abusive texts made hidden. They can unhide, delete, accept or report the messages by manually tapping them. You can even block an offensive account or any other store that the user might create so that you can avoid them from reaching you again with a new account.

Instagram has announced that the enhanced DM filter feature will be available in some countries in the next few weeks and serve global users in the next few months. This is a significant addition to the platform that can help monitor DM abuses without invading user privacy. Such advanced recognition and filter technology can be an effective tool to track abusive users and prevent harmful online violence and harassment.