The internet can be a wonderful place where communities thrive – but in a place where people can hide behind anonymity, cyber-bullying happens, especially on a platform that puts vanity front-and-center like Instagram.
On a social media so popular, Instagram has to walk the tight rope in trying to balance allowing freedom of expression while keeping its users safe. To fight online bullying, the Facebook-owned brand will start to warn users when their captions are considered offensive.
Image credit: Instagram
With the help of AI, this new feature sends you a notification when if your image or video caption is deemed harsh and will prompt you to edit your caption, or share it anyway. Ultimately, the choices are still in your hands, and you can still choose to go toxic if you wanted – but Instagram hopes that the new feature could at least make people realize what they’re sharing online could hurt others – because people can be very ignorant sometimes.
The feature is rolling out to select countries for now, but will make its gradual introduction elsewhere soon.