We’ve all seen it, whether or not we knew it had a name. Those accounts that just seem to comment on everything they can, saying nothing but nasty things. Internet, meet trolls.
So how do we stop all that nastiness and make the Internet the place we all know and love? Thanks to Instagram’s new features, personal accounts and companies can start protecting themselves against these trolls. This is Instagram’s third role out of safety measures just this quarter, a huge advance compared to many other social media platforms. The four major changes you’ll see starting to roll out are the ability to turn off comments from specific accounts, removing follows from specific accounts, support for comment liking, and blocking specific accounts from viewing Instagram Stories.
If you head over to your settings and click on comments, you can filter your comments by specific keywords or what Instagram may deem as genuinely abusive content. This is where the line can get blurry though. We encourage you to practice with caution – you don’t want to accidentally block too much and end up losing out on some of the real social media fun!
To block someone from your Instagram Stories, click on your profile, and then click the gear icon on the top right. Scroll down until you see Story Settings, which should be under Invite and Follow People. In there, you can hide your story from specific people and control who can send you message replies.
Let’s review some old features, too. You can still block people – just head over to their account, click those three dots on the top right, and hit block account. Instagram will prompt you to then confirm that you want to actually block this account. However, if someone is harassing you on Instagram, make sure you take it a step further. Not only should you block the account, you should also report it. To do so, click on those same three dots and right below block, you’ll see report. Follow the appropriate steps from there.
We hope these safety tips help you continue to keep your Instagram a fun, safe place to share with friends, family, and anyone else.
Written by our Digital Specialist, Nora Henick.
Have some experience with Insta-trolls? Tweet us @somethingsocial or tag us on Instagram- @somethingsocial.
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