Online bullying and abuse is a big issue facing social media platforms these days. Even with a variety of privacy settings, it’s not always possible (or easy) to weed out abusive accounts. To that end, Instagram has now launched a new “Restrict” feature which will let users shadow ban abusive and bullying accounts.
With this feature, when a user restricts another account, the account holder will not be blocked from viewing their account, but any comments made by the restricted account will only be visible to the commenter. Moreover, messages from the restricted account will automatically be sent to the Message Requests section in Instagram, even if the user has earlier exchanged messages with them.
The feature should prove hugely helpful, especially to female users and celebrities who often have to deal with abusive and hateful comments and messages on Instagram. With a shadow ban, the abusive accounts will not be able to find out that their account has been restricted, which should deter toxic users from getting even more abusive (and sometimes being physically harmful) towards the user.
To restrict an account, users can swipe on their comment on Instagram, and choose “Restrict” or head over to the user’s account and restrict them from there. Over the last few years, Instagram has started taking online bullying more seriously than ever before, and this new feature should definitely prove helpful to users who are facing online bullying or abuse on the platform.
